The Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS, and the Danish Social Science Council, SSF, have the pleasure of inviting you to a workshop on
Democratisation and Development:
New Political Strategies for the Middle East
Friday, 15 April 2005, 08.30-18.00
Danish Institute for International Studies
Main Auditorium, Pakhuset, Ground Floor
Strandgade 71, 1401 Copenhagen K
Background
The “Arab Initiative” of the Danish Government is in line with general approaches of Western foreign policies of fostering global peace through political and economic liberalisation. These approaches recognise that military containment alone will not be sufficient to prevent the spill-over of violence from civil wars and social conflicts in the developing world and it is particularly the Middle East that has become their major target.
However, the ambitious project of developing the Middle East via democratisation is likely to fail as long as it does not take into account the various particularities of Middle Eastern states. For this reason, handy historical blueprints such as the post-1945 Marshall Plan or the OSCE process are of little help.
They disregard the radically different socio-political and international contexts in which Middle Eastern states have evolved. While the OSCE process dealt with consolidated states, democratising the Middle East requires first and foremost development of the preconditions for a democratic process. Without a functioning state apparatus and a social order based on a certain level of economic and legal security, development remains absent and democracy degenerates into an electoral smoke-screen as previous liberalisation policies have shown.
Against this background, the workshop investigates the political economy of development and democracy in the Middle East. It invites researchers, graduate students, journalists, as well as representatives from ministries, NGO’s and other Danish organisations that are involved in the development sector and/or Middle Eastern affairs to discuss the topic with six scholars who combine intensive and innovative research with practical and/or field experiences in the implementation of public policies in their related fields.
The workshop will be subdivided into two major parts. The first session addresses the international and transnational contexts to which development strategies for the Middle East have to respond, while the second will focus on three case studies, analysing the particular political and economic environments in which liberalisation processes in the Middle East have taken place. Each topic will be introduced by a short presentation (15 minutes) of one of the invited scholars whose main task, however, will be to serve as resource persons for the subsequent open discussion among the participants.
Practical Information
The workshop language will be English.
Please note that registration is no longer possible.
Programme (as of 1 March 2005)
8.30-9.00 Registration and coffee
9.00-9.15 Introduction
Dietrich Jung, Danish Institute for International Studies
9.15-10.15 Authoritarian Politics and External Support for Good Governance in the Arab World
Oliver Schlumberger, German Institute for Development Research, Bonn
10.30-11.30 New Religious Programming: The Impact of Satellite Broadcasting in the Arab World
Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, University of Copenhagen and Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo
11.45–12.45 Transnational Islamist Networks and the Prospects of Democratisation in the Middle East
Thomas Scheffler, Free University, Berlin
13.00–14.00 Lunch
14.00–15.00 Neo-Authoritarianism: Democratisation as a Means of Stabilising Authoritarian Rule in Contemporary Egypt
Maye Kassem, American University, Cairo
15.15–16.15 The Political Economy of Islam and Democracy in Turkey: From the Welfare Party to the AKP
Ziya Önish, Koc University, Istanbul
16.30–17.30 State-Economy Relations as State-Building: The Politics of Economic Liberalisation in Syria
Søren Schmidt, Roskilde University
17.30–18.00 Summing up
Dietrich Jung, Danish Institute for International Studies
The programme may be subject to change. Please consult this website regularly for updates to the programme.
To download the programme as a Pdf-file, please follow this link (Pdf, 2,70 KB)
For further information on the speakers please follow this link (Pdf, 6,43 KB) |
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