Global Politics and Security – serie

Despite being challenged by authoritarian counter-revolutionary responses, the Coronaviruspandemic, and a complex (geo)political context, the uprisings that started tenyears ago in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa are still very muchalive. By adopting a comparative approach, this comprehensive volume investigatesthe ongoing protests on three levels of analysis (local, national, regional) and throughseven case studies (Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia). Particularattention is also placed on the role of the European Union and its memberstates in this historical transformation.

Access to electricity is a key factor for the future of the African continent. Energy poverty and lack of universal access to electricity services are, in fact, remarkably hurting human progress in Africa. Today, sub-Saharan Africa hosts 14 percent of the world’s population but 60 percent of the world’s people without access to electricity: of the more than 1 billion people globally who had no access to electricity, around 600 million lived in the region. In these conditions, many African countries are unable to develop a solid economy or provide basic health and education services to their citizens. Starting from the analysis of present and future economic, demographic, social and technological trends, Empowering Africa offers an in-depth assessment of the current status and of the future prospects of access to electricity in the African continent. The volume describes the main developments in the Africa’s electricity sector, addressing the issue both from a regional and a thematic point of view, and attempting to define the key trends of a sector that will necessarily contribute to shape the continent’s political, social and economic dynamics for the next decades.

This edited collection is a timely and in-depth perception analysis of Euro-Mediterranean relations and the EU policy actions towards the Mediterranean region.The book takes as its departure point the recent geopolitical developments in the Middle East and North Africa, urging the renewal of a Euro-Mediterranean partnership while challenging the ‘Eurocentric orientation of EU policies’ – a critical factor which explains why the EU has been unable to adjust its policies to the region’s fast-changing complexities.The volume subsequently introduces the findings of an elite survey conducted between 2017–2018 with local stakeholders in 9 countries in the Mediterranean. The findings and policy recommendations presented in the book aim to contribute to making EU policies more responsive to major challenges in the region, more flexible on the multilateral and the bilateral level and more inclusive of key stakeholders.This book will interest EU policy-makers, civil society, academics and researchers on EU policy, as well as IR experts in general.

In recent elections across the European Union, parties adopting an anti-immigration stance and making use of populist rhetoric have been gaining electoral breakthrough. Against this backdrop, and in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of the connections binding migration and populism dynamics in Europe, this volume aims to trigger a discussion on the causes and consequences of the rise of populism in Europe, and deconstruct the rhetorical frames it uses to depict migratory flows as an exceptional phenomenon.

Tech giants entering the banking and financial industry is not an issue of the future, it is already happening. This phenomenon has crucial implications that extend well beyond the banking system. There are questions like: Will tech giants be competitors of incumbents or will they rather partner up? How is the financial regulation going to handle this radical change, and will it succeed in creating a level playing field? What are the implications from a political and social point of view? Will tech giants acquire too much bargaining power in dealing with sovereign states, allowing them to shift political decisions and laws in their favour? This edited book provides a number of answers to these questions through a research effort on the economic and political implications of this technological revolution. While it is impossible to stop this revolution, it poses the challenge of steering towards a sustainable and inclusive improvement of our society and economy.

In this edited book, several leading scholars address a number of security-related issues, all connected to one main research question: What (in)security means from the perspective of people living in the Middle East and North Africa? In doing so, the contributors shed light on the contours of a stable and legitimate order that responds to the needs of the peoples in the region, on what history tells us about the ongoing debates on security and stability in the region, and, last but not least, on «human security», which encompasses the dimension of human rights, political rights and social/economic security.

Cultural heritage and illicit trafficking in the Middle East are two key topics of our time. The book sheds light on both aspects, and identifies the need to democratize cultural heritage, by giving greater control to local communities. It also investigates the link between local hotbeds of conflict and violence in countries such as Syria and Iraq, as well as war economics, transnational criminal networks and the politics of deliberate destruction and theft of cultural heritage. Finally, the chapters analyze the impact of non-violent and violent non-state actors, fragile states, forced migration, environmental degradation, as well as how local and international institutions have reacted to the dramatic events which the region and its inhabitants have experienced in recent years

Italy’s officially joining the China-led Belt and Road Initiative sparked a fierce debate. By analysing five fields of cooperation, the volume sheds light on whether the bilateral agreement has brought about an intensification of bilateral collaboration as wished by the Italian government at the time and whether the concerns around it have materialised. The contributions will show that potential risks coexist alongside unsubstantiated ones.