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Recent studies of civil resistance indicate that security force defections can heavily influence the outcome of nonviolent uprisings against authoritarian regimes. Yet we know little about why, when, and how mutiny occurs. In this article, I ask: what factors influence the likelihood of military defections during a nonviolent conflict? In reviewing various literatures, I identify ten factors that facilitate or obstruct mutiny. I propose that two of these are particularly influential: (1) whether troops receive economic or political benefits from the regime; and (2) whether troops perceive the regime as fragile, based on the international community's response to the conflict. Specifically, I argue that troops who receive benefits from a regime are more likely to remain loyal while those who receive no such benefits are more likely to defect. However, even the most underprivileged troops are unlikely to defect if they believe that the state is strong enough to withstand a major civilian uprising. Soldiers' perception of regime strength is partly shaped by whether outside nations support the opposition, thereby weakening the state, or send troops to reinforce the regime's control. Using a qualitative comparative method, I illustrate these dynamics through an examination of several Arab Spring uprisings: Egypt, where the military sided with civil resisters; Bahrain, where troops remained loyal to the state; and Syria, where the military split. Then, to encourage more research on this topic, I use these three cases to generate additional hypotheses about defections that others can test against a wider set of cases. I conclude with a discussion of the questions that future researchers should explore and the types of methodological approaches that are needed in this field of study.

Why are some dictators more successful at demobilizing protest movements than others? Repression sometimes stamps out protest movements (Bahrain in 2011) but can also cause a backlash (Egypt and Tunisia in 2011), leading to regime change. This article argues that the effectiveness of repression in quelling protests varies depending upon the income sources of authoritarian regimes. Oil-rich autocracies are well equipped to contend with domestic and international criticism, and this gives them a greater capacity to quell protests through force. Because oil-poor dictators lack such ability to deal with criticism, repression is more likely to trigger a backlash of increased protests. The argument is supported by analysis of newly available data on mass protests from the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO 2.0) dataset, which covers all countries (1945–2006). This article implies that publics respond strategically to repression, and tend to demobilize when the government is capable of continually employing repression with impunity.

The current food security situation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is surrounded by uncertainty and bleak due to several domestic and global challenges, such as a rapid increase in population growth rate, a global slowdown in economic growth rate, climate change impacts, a reduction in water resources, the spreading of political instability, the prevalence of malnutrition, low food production, high food import dependency, weak transport infrastructure, weak drinking water and sanitation services, and suffering from a severe income gap between the population of this region. This paper aims to shed light on the food security situation in the MENA region by investigating the determinants of food security in that region and then measuring the food security performance of each MENA country. The study contributes to tackling the current food security situation in the MENA region by focusing on investigating the food security determinants and weights by using multiple regression analysis to understand the role of macroeconomic factors in improving food security performance in the MENA countries. The findings confirm that in terms of food availability and access, the MENA countries have decent stability on those dimensions, while food utilization and stability dimensions in MENA countries have poor performance. Keywords: Food Security, MENA, Multiple Regression Analysis, Food Security Determinants and performance. JEL codes: C01, O13, Q18

This paper analyzes the complex processes that have been shaping the increased involvement of Bahraini women in politics, especially their share in elected political offices as MPs. Looking back at the unprecedented rise of female MPs in electoral polls in 2018, this research examines the last two decades of female progress in politics and looks in depth at the contributing factors. Using the initial factors established through a literature review, it examines their relevance in the Bahraini political environment, and establishes additional factors peculiar to the kingdom. The role of women is interwoven with political liberalization reforms in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but it was also shaped by the current events, namely, the popular uprising of 2011. The uprising was ultimately contained; yet, the authoritarian upgrading that followed paradoxically created opportunities for greater women’s engagement in electoral politics. The case of Bahrain sheds light on how sectarianism, popular uprisings, and authoritarianism affect women’s position in electoral politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Despite sharing attributes that scholars argue promote international cooperation, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have few formal international agreements with each other. Does this absence of formal agreements imply a cooperation failure? We argue that absolute monarchies frequently cooperate with each other but do so informally. At the domestic level, absolute monarchs pursue their personal interests by unilaterally and nontransparently developing and implementing policies. These norms of domestic policymaking engender an absolutist logic, which shapes how absolute monarchs selectively use informal and formal cooperation at the international level. When cooperating with each other, absolute monarchs maximize mutual private benefits through similarly unilateral and nontransparent policymaking, producing secret, cartel-like informal agreements. Using the 10 Million International Dyadic Events data, we develop a data set of informal and formal cooperation from 1990 to 2004. We find that joint absolute monarchy dyads have higher levels of informal cooperation and lower levels of formal cooperation than joint democratic dyads and dyads of mixed regime types. We also draw on the Continent of International Law dataset to demonstrate that, when absolute monarchs enter into agreements with leaders of other regime types, they strategically accept the formal design mechanisms necessary for optimal cooperation. We assess the causal mechanisms underlying the absolutist logic through an in-depth case study of the informal, secret 2014 Riyadh agreements that outlined security cooperation between the Gulf monarchies.

Purpose The question of public debt management for both developed and developing economies has created an enormous amount of political as well as academic interest. The purpose of this paper is to examine how governance affects public debt accumulation in the Arabian Gulf countries during the period between 1996 and 2015 period. The six Worldwide Governance indicators (WGI) (voice and accountability (VAA), political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism, government effectiveness (GEFF), regulatory quality (RQ), rule of law (RL) and control of corruption) were used to measure the quality of governance in these countries. The results show that an increase in every governance indicator except control of corruption leads to a decrease in public debt. Design/methodology/approach The authors estimate a dynamic specification of debt to GDP ratio to study how governance affects public debt accumulation in the Arabian Gulf countries during the 1996–2015 period. The dependent variable in this study is the ratio of public debt to GDP. This study relies on the six measures of institution’s quality given by the WGI. These variables are the VAA, political stability and absence of violence (PSAV)/terrorism, GEFF, RQ, RL and control of corruption. Additional control variables are also incorporated to account for the omitted variables bias. These include the rate of inflation (Al-Marhubi, 2000) and the independent variable lagged one period. The study of the statistical relationship between institutional quality and public debt allows us to quantify the direct effect of governance on public debt, which is the effect that goes through an increase in spending or a reduction in fiscal revenues and not through a decrease in GDP growth. The econometric estimation is carried out using panel fixed effects and GLS random effects. Findings The estimation results confirm the core hypothesis, which considers that the poor governance in a country the higher is the ratio of public debt to GDP, ceteris paribus. Indeed, five of the worldwide Governance Index are negatively correlated with public debt ratio. These indices are GEFF, VAA, PSAV, RQ and RL. Empirical findings for other independent variables are consistent with those of empirical studies in the literature. The coefficient on the independent variable per capita income has the theoretically expected negative sign and it is highly statistically significant, implying that the higher the per capita income in a country, the lower the ratio of public debt. The independent variable government expenditure has the theoretically expected positive sign suggesting that the higher the government expenditure, the higher the ratio of public debt. The education variable has negative but not statistically significant coefficients. The independent variables (inflation, unemployment rate and lag debt ratio) have the expected signs and are highly statistically significant, implying that the higher their value in a country, the higher the ratio of public debt to GDP. Having the theoretically expected effect, the GDP growth variable is negatively correlated with public debt ratio but its coefficients are not statistically significant. Originality/value Although the literature on the damaging effects of poor governance on growth is abundant (Tanzi and Davoodi, 2002; Mauro, 1996; Mo, 2001; Mauro, 1996; Brunetti et al., 1997; Campos et al., 1999; Al-Marhubi, 2000; Depken and Lafountain, 2006; Mauro, 1998), only very recently the relationship between institutional quality and public debt accumulation has been addressed. By reviewing the research on political and institutional determinants of public debt, it was found that there are few studies, which have examined regional differences, and even fewer ones have focused on the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Therefore, this paper aims to fill the gap by focusing on this economic region. Furthermore, when studying the relationship between the quality of institutions and the accumulation of public debt, existing studies focus only on corruption index and neglect other determinants of governance. Thus, a second contribution of the study is to investigate how institution quality, through the six WGI, affects public debt accumulation. Furthermore, given the recent rise in public debt in GCC countries, an increasingly important question is what policy actions do these countries need to take to ensure that their debt will be sustainable and will not overwhelm their financial system? we can add: while there has been much attention given to the political and economic explanations of public debt accumulation in developing and developed countries on a global scale, scholars so far have not focused on this debate in high income oil producers.

One of the major fields that have applied ICT in the 21st century government is e-voting. Around the world, e-voting is taking place and is seen as highly important in many countries. However, in many countries, including the Kingdom of Bahrain, public trust toward voting using ICT tools is still a big challenge. This research aims to investigate the factors that affect public trust toward using e-voting system in Bahrain. A model of trust and risk was used from previous studies and several hypotheses were tested. A questionnaire was employed and 453 responses from citizens were collected in Bahrain. The findings revealed that there are significant factors that the governments should focus on to enhance public trust in the context of e-voting, which are: trust in e-voting; trust of government; perceived risk; disposition to trust and intention to use. The research strength of this study resides in its insights on the factors to be considered by the government to overcome the mistrust of using e-voting in Bahrain. The originality of this research resides on the application of a trust model that was applied in other countries in a new context.

In December 1981, a group baptized al-Jabha al-Islamiyya li Tahrir al-Bahrayn [The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain] unsuccessfully attempted to carry out a coup d'état in Bahrain. The group published newsletters and books in which it described its attempts to overthrow the Al Khalifa ruling family and install Iranian-style Islamic rule instead. These documents provide evidence for the group's involvement with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and of the support the Iranian regime provided for their activities against the Bahraini government.