UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM AND ENERGY STUDIESCOLLEGE OF LEGAL STUDIESDEHRADUN

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROJECTTRANSITIONAL PHASE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL REGIMES

Submitted to:Submitted by:Mr. Sam Babu K.CAbhishek ChhabraAsst. Prof.500011974COLSB.A L.L.BIIIrd SEMINDEX1. Political Regime2. International regimea. Proponents and critics3. Regime Theorya. Theoretical foundations4. Regime theory in international political economy (IPE)a. Liberal approaches to regime theory in IPEb. Realist approaches to regime theory in IPEc. Cognitivist knowledge-based approaches to regime theory in IPE5. Arab Spring.a. Background Motivations Recent history Tunisian revolution Egyptian revolution Libyan civil war Syrian uprising Bahraini uprising Impact of the Arab Spring Arab Revolt Berber Spring International reactions6. Conclusion7. Bibliographya. Websitesb. BooksPolitical RegimeA political regime is a set of political structures that make up a state. A political regime may also be known as a form of government, a state system, or a political system. The term political regimemay also sometimes refer to a specific ruler or set of rulers within a political system.There are many different types of political regime in the modern world, and many more have existed historically. These range from the directly-democratic political regime of Anarchism to totalitarian regimes such as Military Dictatorships orFascism.The political regime that Americans are most familiar with is Representative Democracy. This is a political regime in which representatives are directly elected by the citizenry, and these representatives then make political decisions for the populace, with the assumption that their decisions will reflect the general will of the Republic. This can be compared to a Direct Democracy, in which the citizenry directly votes on all issues of importance.The Republic is probably the most common form of political regime in the world, although it takes many different forms. Republics are often denoted in the official name of the state, and often include a modifier to convey some sort of philosophical ideal the political regime holds. For example, Guyana is known as a Cooperative Republic, Vietnam is known as a Socialist Republic, Sri Lanka is known as a Democratic Socialist Republic, China is known as a Peoples Republic, and North Korea is known as a Democratic Peoples Republic.There are a number of types of political regime that exist more intheorythan anywhere in the world. The strictMeritocracy, for example, where leaders are chosen based on their ability to lead, not necessarily through election by a populace, but by some form of standardized testing. Or a Corporatocracy, a popular political regime in sciencefiction, in which corporations rule their own sovereign states.Generally, for a political regime to survive, it needs to either have a strong mandate from its people, or a strong military might to suppress dissent from its populace. Political regimes that for whatever reason dont fulfill the populace, such as theCommunistpolitical regimes of many Eastern Bloc countries, eventually give way to new political regimes. In the end, its impossible to say if any one political regime is better or worse than another, and the rainbow of political regimes seems to be constantly shifting and evolving.International regimeInternational regimes are not subnational actors or non-governmental organizations. They are international actors, and sometimes, when formally organized, many of them can be considered intergovernmental organizations.Stephen D. Krasner defined International Regimes as Implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors expectations converge in a given area of international relations in the journal International Organization in 1982. Regimes "are more specialized arrangements that pertain to well-defined activities, resources, or geographical areas and often involve only some subset of the members of international society", according to Oran R. Young, in his 1989 book International Cooperation : Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment.Proponents and CriticsRegimes serve crucial functional needs in international relations. Powerful regimes are considered by some scholars as independent actors in international politics. Although ultimately states create and sustain regimes, once institutionalized, regimes can exert influence in world politics that is practically independent of state sovereignty. Insofar as they are organized by means of treaties among countries, regimes provide an important source of formal international law. Regimes themselves can also be subjects of international law. Insofar as they shape the behavior of states, the most influential regimes can also be a source of customary international law.Critics of regimes deplore their influence as a source of additional conflict or inefficiency in world politics. The security regime organized around the United Nations Security Council is sometimes cited as a case in point. Some other scholars are also alarmed that regimes represent a dilution of democratic control.

Regime TheoryRegime theory is a theory within international relations derived from the liberal tradition that argues that international institutions or regimes affect the behavior of states (or other international actors). It assumes that cooperation is possible in the anarchic system of states, as regimes are by definition instances of international cooperation.Theoretical foundationsWhile realism predicts that conflict should be the norm in international relations, regime theorists say that there is cooperation despite anarchy. Often they cite cooperation in trade, human rights and collective security among other issues. These instances of cooperation are regimes. The most commonly cited definition of regimes comes from Stephen Krasner. Krasner defines regimes as "institutions possessing norms, decision rules, and procedures which facilitate a convergence of expectations.Not all approaches to regime theory, however are liberal or neoliberal; some realist scholars like Joseph Grieco have developed hybrid theories which take a realist based approach to this fundamentally liberal theory. (Realists don't say cooperation never happens, just that it's not the norm; it's a difference of degree).Regime theory in international political economy (IPE)As stated above, a regime is defined by Stephen D. Krasner as a set of explicit or implicit "principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area. This definition is intentionally broad, and covers human interaction ranging from formal organizations (i.e., OPEC) to informal groups (i.e., major banks during the debt crisis). Note that a regime need not be composed of states.Within IPE there are three main approaches to regime theory: the dominant, liberal-derived interest-based approach; the realist critique of interest-based approaches, and finally knowledge-based approaches that come from the cognitivist school of thought (Hasenclever, 1997). The first two are rationalist approaches while the third is sociological.Although realism is arguably the dominant school of thought in the field of international relations generally, within regime theory specifically, because regime theory is by definition a theory that explains international cooperation (i.e. it's a traditionally liberal concept) liberal approaches prevail within the literature.Liberal approaches to regime theory in IPELiberal interest-based approaches to regime theory state that cooperation in anarchy is possible without a hegemon because there exists a "convergence of expectations." Regimes facilitate cooperation by establishing standards of behavior which signal to all other members that individual states are in fact cooperating. When all states expect the other participants to cooperate, the probability of sustaining cooperation increases dramatically.Neoliberals believe that realists neglect the degree to which countries share interests and the iterative nature of state relations. In the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the actors' behavior is determined by the following assumptions:1. States are rational, unitary, gain maximizing actors, living in anarchy and ridden by the security dilemma.2. There are future consequences for present actions. The prisoner's dilemma is not a one-shot event. 3. It is in the interest of states to cooperate in the present because, in the future, other states will defect on them (Tit-for-Tat strategy). 4. The theory presupposes that states are concerned with absolute gains, that is, states do not consider the gains or losses of other states in their utility analysis. In contrast neorealists argue that states are concerned with relative gains. That is, states are concerned with the advantages they gain versus the advantages of other states in the anarchic system.

Realist approaches to regime theory in IPERealists, such as Joseph Grieco, propose power-based theories of regimes using hegemonic stability theory. Although sometimes regime theory functions as a counterweight to the hegemonic stability theory (which is a concept borrowed from economics) realists also use it within regime theory itself to explain how regimes change. When used in this way, realists argue that the presence of a strong hegemon is what makes for a successful (i.e. "robust" and "resilient") regime.In summary then, within regime theory realists and liberals differ over the nature of international cooperation and how much of a role international institutions play. Liberals believe regimes (cooperation) comes about through a convergence of state interests, and that international institutions help create that synthesis of interests, while realists believe that regimes simply reflect the distribution of power in the international system. (Powerful states create regimes to serve their security and economic interests. Regimes have no independent power over states, particularly great powers. As such, regimes are simply intervening variables between the real independent variable (power) and the observed outcome (cooperation)).Cognitivist knowledge-based approaches to regime theory in IPEIn contrast to the rationalist approaches above, cognitivists critique the rationalist theories on the grounds that liberals and realists both use flawed assumptions such as that nation-states are always and forever rational actors; that interests remain static, that different interpretations of interests and power are not possible. The cognitivists also argue that even when the rationalist theories employ iterated game theories where future consequences affect present decisions, they ignore a major implication of such iteration: learning.Consequences from an iterated game look backwards to the past as well as forward to the future. So ones decisions today are not the same as ones decisions tomorrow, not only because the actors is taking the future into account but because one is taking the past into account as well. Finally cognitivists use a post-positivist methodology which does not believe that social institutions or actors can be separated out of their surrounding socio-political context for analytical purposes.Arab SpringThe Arab Spring, otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010. To date, there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its government; civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, the latter resulting in the resignation of the Yemeni prime minister; major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman; and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. Clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011 have also been inspired by the regional Arab Spring. The series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa has become known as the "Arab Spring", and sometimes as the "Arab Spring and Winter", "Arab Awakening" or "Arab Uprisings" even though not all participants in protests are Arab. It was sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 following Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. With the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked by the Tunisian "Burning Man" struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen, then spread to other countries. The largest, most organised demonstrations have often occurred on a "day of rage", usually Friday after noon prayers. The protests have also triggered similar unrest outside the region.BackgroundMotivationsNumerous factors have led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption , economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population. Also, some[who?] attribute the 2009 Iranian protests as one of the reasons behind the Arab Spring. The catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo. Increasing food prices and global famine rates have also been a significant factor, as they involve threats to food security worldwide and prices that approach levels of the 20072008 world food price crisis. Amnesty International singled out Wikileaks' release of US diplomatic cables as a catalyst for the revolts.Recent HistoryThe current wave of protests is not an entirely new phenomenon, resulting in part from the activities of dissident activists as well as members of a variety of social and union organizations that have been active for years in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and other countries in the area, as well as in the territory of Western Sahara.Tunisia experienced a series of conflicts over the past three years, the most notable occurring in the mining area of Gafsa in 2008, where protests continued for many months. These protest included rallies, sit-ins, and strikes, during which there were two fatalities, an unspecified number of wounded, and dozens of arrests.In Western Sahara, the Gdeim Izik protest camp was erected 12 km south-east of El Aain by a group of young Sahrawis on 9 October 2010. Their intention was to demonstrate against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human rights abuses. The camp contained between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, but on 8 November 2010 it was destroyed and its inhabitants evicted by Moroccan security forces. The security forces faced strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians, and rioting soon spread to El Aain and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths. Tunisian revolutionFollowing the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, a series of increasingly violent street demonstrations through December 2010 ultimately led to the ouster of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The demonstrations were precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech and other forms of political freedom, and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades, and have resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators. Egyptian revolutionFollowing the uprising in Tunisia and prior to his entry as a central figure in Egyptian politics, potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei warned of a 'Tunisia-style explosion' in Egypt. Protests in Egypt began on 25 January and ran for 18 days. Beginning around midnight on 28 January, the Egyptian government attempted, somewhat successfully, to eliminate the nation's Internet access, in order to inhibit the protesters' ability to organize through social media. Later that day, as tens of thousands protested on the streets of Egypt's major cities, President Mubarak dismissed his government, later appointing a new cabinet. Mubarak also appointed the first Vice President in almost 30 years.On 10 February, Mubarak ceded all presidential power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, but soon thereafter announced that he would remain as President until the end of his term. However, protests continued the next day, and Suleiman quickly announced that Mubarak had resigned from the presidency and transferred power to the Armed Forces of Egypt. The military immediately dissolved the Egyptian Parliament, suspended the Constitution of Egypt, and promised to lift the nation's thirty-year "emergency laws". Libyan civil warAfter the success of the revolution in Tunisia, a protest on living conditions began on 14 January in Bayda, Libya, where protesters clashed with police and attacked government offices. Anti-government protests began in Libya on 15 February 2011. By 18 February, the opposition controlled most of Benghazi, the country's second-largest city. The government dispatched elite troops and mercenaries in an attempt to recapture it, but they were repelled. By 20 February, protests had spread to the capital Tripoli, leading to a television address by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who warned the protestors that their country could descend into civil war.On 26 February 2011, amidst ongoing efforts by demonstrators and rebel forces to wrest control of Tripoli from the Jamahiriya, the opposition set up an interim government in Benghazi to oppose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's rule. On 17 March, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted, authorising a no-fly zone over Libya, and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Two days later, France, the United States and the United Kingdom intervened in Libya with a bombing campaign against pro-Gaddafi forces. A coalition of 27 states from Europe and the Middle East soon joined the intervention. The forces were driven back from the outskirts of Benghazi, and the rebels mounted an offensive, capturing scores of towns across the coast of Libya. Syrian uprisingProtests in Syria started on 26 January, when one case of self-immolation was reported. Protesters have been calling for political reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights, as well as an end to the state of emergency, which has been in place since 1963. A "day of rage" was set for 45 February, but it was uneventful.On 6 March, the Syrian security forces arrested about 15 children in Daraa in Southern Syria for writing slogans against the regime. Children were tortured brutally. Daraa is the first city to protest against the Baathist regime, which has been ruling Syria since 1963.Thousands of protestors gathered in Damascus, Aleppo, al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hama on 15 March, with recently released politician Suhair Atassi becoming an unofficial spokesperson for the "Syrian revolution". The next day there were reports of approximately 3000 arrests and a few martyrs, but there are no official figures on the number of deaths.Bahraini uprisingThe 2011 protests in Bahrain were initially aimed at achieving greater political freedom and respect for human rights, and were not intended to threaten the monarchy. Lingering frustration among the Shiite majority with being ruled by the Sunni government was a major root cause, but the protests in Tunisia and Egypt are cited as the inspiration for the demonstrations. The protests began in Bahrain on 14 February and were largely peaceful, until a raid by police on the night of 17 February against protestors sleeping at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, in which police killed three protestors. Following the deadly raid, the protestors' aims expanded to a call for the end of the monarchy. On 18 February, government forces opened fire on protesters, mourners, and news journalists, prompting protesters to begin calling for the overthrow of the Bahraini monarchy and government. On 19 February, protesters occupied Pearl Roundabout after the government ordered troops and police to withdraw.Impact of the Arab SpringThe regional unrest has not been limited to countries of the Arab world. The early success of uprisings in North Africa was inspired by the uprisings of disenchanted people in the Middle Eastern states of Iran and Turkey to take to the streets and agitate for reforms.

The bid for statehood by Palestine at the UN on 23 September 2011 is also regarded as drawing inspiration from the Arab Spring after years of failed peace negotiations with Israel. In the West Bank, schools and government offices were shut to allow demonstrations backing the UN membership bid in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron; echoing similar peaceful protests from other Arab countries.Arab RevoltThe rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire goes back to 1821. Arab nationalism has its roots in the Mashriq (the Arabs lands east of Egypt), particularly in countries of Sham (the Levant). The political orientation of Arab nationalists in the years prior to the Great War was generally moderate.The Young Turk Revolution began on 3 July 1908 and quickly spread throughout the empire, resulting in the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of parliament. This period is known as the Second Constitutional Era. The Arabs' demands were of a reformist nature, limited in general to autonomy, greater use of Arabic in education, and changes in conscription in the Ottoman Empire in peacetime for Arab conscripts that allowed local service in the Ottoman army. In the elections held in 1908, the Young Turks through their Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) managed to gain the upper hand against the rival group led by Prens Sabahaddin.Berber SpringThe Berber Spring was a period of political protest and civil activism in 1980 claiming recognition of the Berber identity and language in Algeria with events mainly taking place in Kabylia and Algiers. The background was marked by two decades of harsh Arabization measures instituted by the Arab nationalist FLN dictatorship government, which refused to recognize Algeria's Berber identity and banned the Berber language altogether.The Berber Spring is traditionally dated as beginning on March 10, 1980 with the banning of a conference due to be held by the Kabyle intellectual Mouloud Mammeri at Hasnaoua University in Tizi-Ouzou. A critical point was the coordinated arrest of hundreds of Berber activists, students and doctors on April 20, sparking a general strike.International reactionsProtests in many countries affected by the Arab Spring have attracted widespread support from the international community, while harsh government responses have generally met condemnation. In the case of the Bahraini, Moroccan, and Syrian protests, the international response has been considerably more nuanced.Protests have also affected oil prices, contributing to the 2011 energy crisis. The International Monetary Fund said oil prices were likely to be higher than originally forecast due to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, major regions of oil production.

CONCLUSIONThe relation between political factors and economic growth has come to the fore by the work of Lipset (1959) who examined how economic developments affect the political regime. Since then, research on the issues has proliferated making clear that the political environment plays an important role in economic growth. While political institutions are influenced by economic development, they are in turn a key determinant of the development process. In this paper the influence of political regimes on economic development was re-examined.

The time and country fixed-effects model shows that controlling for global trends will decrease the effect of democracy on income per capita. As such, our main result points out that when we control the growth regression by the initial period GDP per capita the democracy factors lack their relevancy, independently of the measure adopted for the political regime variable (Freedom House Index or Policy Index). Therefore, results obtained give reasons to suspect that there is astrong causal effect of democracy (and as such political regimes) on income, being consistent with previous literature (Rodrik, 1997; Gerring et al., 2005, among others), but which contradict those obtained by Papaioannou and Siourounis (2008a), where they do not control for the initial period log GDP per capita.However, the importance of controlling for country and time fixed effects was showed to be relevant and a lot more work is still needed on the field of the relation between GDP per capita and political regimes. Under the attained results we see that there is no causal effect of democracy and political regimes on income. However, there is strong cross-sectional relationship between the two variables.Therefore we may formulate two hypotheses that could explain this fact. Hypothesis 1: Our first prediction is that countries with more democratic structures are betterdeveloped, as measured by higher GDP and higher GDP per capita, however it may take a long time for a culture of democracy to influence economic growth and also because politicalinstitutions change only slowly.

Hypothesis 2: Historical factors are influencing the economic and political development of societiesBibliographyWebsites1. www.wikipedia.org2. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-political-regime.htm3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_regime4. www.library.carleton.ca/sites/default/.../prrt-africa-10-94-cbk.pdf5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime_theory6. http://books.google.com/books?id=k-CWBDECTtMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false7. http://books.google.com/books?id=WIYKBNM5zagC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_Spring9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_RevoltBooks1. International regimes By Stephen D. Krasner.2. Theories of international regimes By Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, Volker Rittberger.