Constitutionalism and political order in Libya 2011-2014 : three myths about the past and a new constitution

Libya’s 2011 revolution enabled ordinary citizens and an emerging civil society to voice their demands on a variety of key issues including Libya’s new constitution. Libyans faced the challenge of redefining and re-empowering national political institutions through the establishment of a new constitution. This article analyses a series of constitutional grassroots debates that were led by the Forum for Democratic Libya (FDL), thereby unpacking insights not only into the constitutional process itself but also into the underlying expectations regarding a new political order in the country. We argue that the brief period of relative peace and stability in Libya between 2011 and 2013 presents a ‘golden age’ of constitutional activities that created meaningful interface among Libyan citizens after decades of oppression. We argue however that although constitutional debates allowed for citizen engagement in the process of constitutional development it had little bearing on the outcomes of this process. Citizen demands remained unanswered due to deeply entrenched informal political practices causing activists to face the arduous task of trying to influence a formal process of constitutional development. Priority demands expressed by citizens in our research pointed to the need for Libyan political actors to address the creation of a new system of governance, civil liberties and three regional priorities namely immigration and citizenship in Southern Libya, reconciliation and justice in Western Libya, and natural resources in Eastern Libya. The priorities remain unaddressed in Libya and provide insights of priority issues that will require serious efforts in the future of a stable Libya.PostprintPeer reviewe

Crises and critical junctures in authoritarian regimes:Addressing uprisings’ temporalities and discontinuities

In this article, we aim at sharpening common understandings of the notion of political crisis to better explain the trajectories of authoritarian transformations during popular uprisings. We make three major claims. First, we propose a definition of crisis as brief moments of institutional fluidity and openness in which a process can take different directions. We delineate the crisis concept from the concept of critical junctures and outline how our approach contributes to the methodological debate on 'near misses'. Second, we indicate how the de-institutionalisation processes leading up to a crisis are to be analytically distinguished from within-crisis moments. We argue in favour of a discontinuity approach that takes into account the different temporalities of gradual lead-up processes and rapid within-crisis dynamics. Finally, we illustrate our theoretical and analytical reasoning with concrete cases from the authoritarian crises of the Arab uprisings, whilst suggesting that our argument can travel to other areas of research in which crisis narratives have gained prominence

Le mouvement protestataire algérien de 2019 à la lumière de la théorie des mouvements sociaux et des printemps arabes

Le mouvement de contestation de 2019 en Algérie est-il un mouvement social « exceptionnel » ? Si oui, quels sont les critères qui le distingue des autres ? Ou alors, cette vague de mécontentement n’est-elle qu’une variante des mouvements des « printemps arabes » de 2011 ? La théorie des mouvements sociaux propose différentes grilles de lecture pour donner un sens à ces phénomènes de mobilisations, ainsi qu’à leurs conséquences politiques. Bien que ces perspectives analytiques n’aient été systématiquement appliquées aux sociétés du Maghreb et du Machrek que depuis peu, leurs ressources méthodologiques et analytiques apportent un éclairage utile sur des événements, tels que la mobilisation actuelle en Algérie. Elles permettent d’élucider et de structurer à des degrés différents, tant ce qui constitue la particularité du mouvement algérien de 2019, que ce qui correspond aux processus génériques des mouvements protestataires. Dans cette perspective cette contribution vise à replacer ce mouvement dans le champ plus large des mouvements sociaux pour souligner tant les trajectoires les plus probables de ces mobilisations que leurs aspects novateurs par rapport à la reconfiguration de la gouvernance autoritaire dans le pays.How exceptional is the 2019 social unrest in Algeria? If it is exceptional what are its characteristics? Alternatively, is this wave of discontent merely a variation of the movements of the 2011 Arab Uprisings? Social movement theory proposes different frameworks to make sense of these mobilizations and their political outcomes. Although these analytical perspectives were only recently systematically applied to the Middle East and North Africa, their methodological and analytical tools bring some useful insights on events like the current wave of mobilization in Algeria. They help structuring and explaining to varying degrees what constitutes the specificities of the 2019 Algerian movement and what represents generic processes of protest movements. In this light, this contribution seeks to reposition this particular movement within the larger field of social movements in order to highlight its likely trajectory as well as its novel character in relation to the reconfiguration of authoritarian governance in the country.هل تعد الحركة الاحتجاجية التي شهدتها الجزائر سنة 2019 حركة اجتماعية "استثنائية"؟ إذا كانت الإجابة بنعم، فما هي السمات التي تجعلها مميزة عن سابقاتها ؟ أم أن موجة الغضب هذه مجرد بديل لموجة حركات "الربيع العربي" التي اندلعت مطلع سنة 2011؟ تطرح نظرية الحركات الاجتماعية قراءات مختلفة لاستيعاب ظواهر التعبئة هذه، فضلًا عن تداعياتها السياسية. مع أن هذه القراءات التحليلية لم تطبق بشكل منهجي على المجتمعات في المغرب والمشرق إلا في الآونة الأخيرة، فـمن شأن مواردها المنهجية والتحليلية أن تضفي فهمًا نيرًا لما تشهده الساحة من أحداث، مثل التعبئة التي تعرفها الجزائر في الوقت الراهن. هذا وتسهم هذه القراءات في البيان والشرح بدرجات متفاوتة، فيما يتعلق بخصوصية الحركة الجزائرية التي انطلقت سنة 2019 من جهة، وفيما يتوافق مع المسار الشامل للحركات الاحتجاجية. من هذا المنطلق، تهدف هذه المساهمة إلى إعادة وضع هذه الحركة في المجال الأوسع للحركات الاجتماعية، لتسليط الضوء على كل من المسارات المحتملة لهذه التعبئة، وعلى جوانبها المبتكرة فيما يتعلق بإعادة تشكيل الحكم التسلطي في البلاد، على حد سواء

Development and application of an in-situ nanoindenter coupled with electrical measurements

The increasing demand for multifunctionality has become a recurring challenge for a wide panel of application fields such as microelectronics, microsystems, energy harvesting or structural applications. This generally implies a smart combination of materials with tailored geometries, thus leading to ever more complex structures. The complexity of these new materials requires the development of higher performance characterization tools. In that purpose, a multifunctional characterization set-up is developed in SIMaP laboratory, mainly based on electrical and mechanical coupling. This set-up is tailored for advanced measurements at the micrometer scale of structural and functional materials displaying small scale microstructure such as multiphase, architecture alloys, thin film/substrate stacks, small-scale system. The heart of this characterization device is a nanoindenter (i.e. an instrumented force-displacement column) (Figure 1). This device can be coupled with highly sensitive electrical test instruments, which enhances quantitative analysis of mechanical behavior, such as monitoring of the contact area or deformation response of oxide layers (Figure 2). This nanoindenter can also be integrated in-situ in a state-of-the-art Scanning Electron Microscope, with high analytical resolution allowing the precise analysis of the indented area by using both local chemical composition and local crystallographic orientation mapping, thanks to EDS and EBSD techniques. In particular microstructure and mechanical behavior of complex architectured materials such as co-deformed multiscale duplex stainless steel can be investigated (Figure 3). This work is performed within the framework of the Centre of Excellence of Multifunctional Architectured Materials “CEMAM” 1 n° AN-10LABX-44-01 funded by the “Investments for the Future” Programme

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Type I interferon-mediated autoinflammation due to DNase II deficiency

Microbial nucleic acid recognition serves as the major stimulus to an antiviral response, implying a requirement to limit the misrepresentation of self nucleic acids as non-self and the induction of autoinflammation. By systematic screening using a panel of interferon-stimulated genes we identify two siblings and a singleton variably demonstrating severe neonatal anemia, membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, liver fibrosis, deforming arthropathy and increased anti-DNA antibodies. In both families we identify biallelic mutations in DNASE2, associated with a loss of DNase II endonuclease activity. We record increased interferon alpha protein levels using digital ELISA, enhanced interferon signaling by RNA-Seq analysis and constitutive upregulation of phosphorylated STAT1 and STAT3 in patient lymphocytes and monocytes. A hematological disease transcriptomic signature and increased numbers of erythroblasts are recorded in patient peripheral blood, suggesting that interferon might have a particular effect on hematopoiesis. These data define a type I interferonopathy due to DNase II deficiency in humans

Current and emerging developments in subseasonal to decadal prediction

Weather and climate variations of subseasonal to decadal timescales can have enormous social, economic and environmental impacts, making skillful predictions on these timescales a valuable tool for decision makers. As such, there is a growing interest in the scientific, operational and applications communities in developing forecasts to improve our foreknowledge of extreme events. On subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) timescales, these include high-impact meteorological events such as tropical cyclones, extratropical storms, floods, droughts, and heat and cold waves. On seasonal to decadal (S2D) timescales, while the focus remains broadly similar (e.g., on precipitation, surface and upper ocean temperatures and their effects on the probabilities of high-impact meteorological events), understanding the roles of internal and externally-forced variability such as anthropogenic warming in forecasts also becomes important. The S2S and S2D communities share common scientific and technical challenges. These include forecast initialization and ensemble generation; initialization shock and drift; understanding the onset of model systematic errors; bias correct, calibration and forecast quality assessment; model resolution; atmosphere-ocean coupling; sources and expectations for predictability; and linking research, operational forecasting, and end user needs. In September 2018 a coordinated pair of international conferences, framed by the above challenges, was organized jointly by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the World Weather Research Prograame (WWRP). These conferences surveyed the state of S2S and S2D prediction, ongoing research, and future needs, providing an ideal basis for synthesizing current and emerging developments in these areas that promise to enhance future operational services. This article provides such a synthesis