Political participation in its “extreme” Middle Eastern context

PAVE | Preventing and Addressing Violent Extremism through Community Resilience in the Balkans and MENA

PAVE Project | Webinar

Despite the preponderance of research on violent extremism and prevention and control policies in general, the key concepts generated by this discipline are problematic because they are often normatively loaded and empirically imprecise. To provide a better understanding of the subject of violent extremism, both scientific and in public policies, we have chosen to engage in dialogue within this webinar, researchers, stakeholders and practitioners whom we call “from the inside”, who question the construction of radicalization and violent extremism within political relations in the MENA region.

Our objective is to constitute a new and original approach, from the bottom, to understand the different realities of violence, radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism, by comparing, confronting and criticizing the different public policies and the different approaches implemented to tackle the phenomenon of violent extremism in the studied states. Beyond radicalization and violent extremism, the question of civil, armed, military and political engagement and participation since the Arab revolts will be posed in an articulation between the local, the national and the global.

We seek to understand how the relations between political actors within states located in the MENA region are articulated with regional issues; how past and present political conflicts are played out between national actors and permanently redraw the map of political and community affiliations, both in discourse and in practice. Local, national and regional contexts will thus be studied as catalysts for political relations between (state and non-state) actors in the region.

Webinar format and research axes

On the basis of a meeting every three weeks, we will meet starting from April 2021 around a communication based on a country research work, complemented by the intervention of an activist, practitioner or stakeholder shedding light on the issues raised, and leaving plenty of room for collective discussion.

Several themes and areas of research will be addressed during the sessions:

Area 1. Commitment, governance and policies

Militant careers, how does one become a political actor in this region of the world? What is political activism built on or what is the trajectory of political actors in the countries of the region?
The relations between dominant political actors, the opposition and marginalization?
Relationship between political institution, partisan institution and religious institution (duplication, alliances, conflicts…)?
Modes of government, political discourse and practices…

Area 2. Law, fight against terrorism and penitentiary institution

The impact of anti-terrorism laws on the treatment of violent extremism and on the organization of prisons: emergence, strengthening and extension of a specific legal framework reconfiguring the relations between justice, police, army and intelligence.

Area 3. media treatment of political and power relations

Area 4. Citizenship vs. sectarianism: public action, self-awareness, new ways of participation and political organization

The webinar will be held in the three languages, Arabic, English and French.