Peer reviewed articles

- Zemni, Sami & Bogaert, Koen,  Urban renewal and social development in Morocco in an age of neoliberal government , Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 38, n° 129, pp. 403-417, 2011  Read online

Abstract: In this article we argue that Morocco has experienced fundamental political change over the past decades. This transition however cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narratives linking economic liberalisation to democratisation. Rather, transition reflects a shift towards authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government. We focus on how political power has been reconfigured into new forms of ‘hybrid’ government where ‘state’, ‘market’ and ‘civil society’ interact in novel ways, by discussing the political dynamics of high-end urban development and the rationales underpinning social development policies to explain how ‘poor people’ are integrated into the realm of the market.

- Zemni, Sami,  The Political Shaping of Islam in Belgium: Between Blatant Islamophobia and Creeping Racism , Race & Class, Vol.53 (1), pp. 28-44, 2011

Abstract: The author discusses the way in which Islam has been cast as a political problem in Belgium and how Muslims have, particularly in Flanders, become framed by politicians and commentators in the media as a threat. The actual socioeconomic difficulties that Muslims (particularly those of Turkish and Moroccan descent) face are being redrawn as problems stemming from their culture and religion. State agencies are trying to shape the political organisation that will represent Belgian Muslims, as the issue of Islam is increasingly debated in terms of the ‘clash of civilisations’, and secularism and the Enlightenment are linked in public debate with a Christian Europe.

- Zemni, Sami & Vertommen, Sigrid,  Politiek-filosofische reflecties over de grensvervaging tussen leger en politie , Orde van de Dag, Afl. 50, juni, pp. 17-24, 2010.

- Zemni, Sami & Bogaert, Koenraad,  Trade, Security and Neoliberal Politics: Whither Arab Reform? Evidence from the Moroccan Case , Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 14, March, N° 1, pp. 91-107, 2009.  Read online

Abstract: This paper argues that the growing contrast between the processes of radicalisation and democratisation in the age of global market reforms and the ‘War on Terror’ are not confined to the domestic Moroccan political scene. Political movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, governments, international institutions and foreign governments are all embedded within a growing number of international networks. The central problem of political and economic reform today lays in the ways it is conceptualised and implemented through a free market ideology that transfers power from the state to new ‘hybrid’ governmental arrangements where ‘state’ and ‘market’ seem to become a symbiotic pair. Within the site of the still powerful nation-state therefore the disappearing traditional boundaries of inclusion and exclusion – formerly readily apparent in and logically deriving from national affiliations – are changing and altering. The main argument is that, contrary to dominant discourses, that democracy promotion through market reform does not bring forth overall economic growth and prosperity which will lead eventually to political liberalisation. Instead these reforms are inducing uneven geographical developments that do not trigger incentives for democratic accountability.

- Zemni, Sami,  Fitna en de teloorgang van de politiek , Res Publica, Vol. 50, n°3, pp. 303-318, 2008

- Vertommen, Sigrid,  De neoliberale ontwikkelingen in Latijns-Amerika: de neerslag op urbanisering , DOOM R. (Red.), Conflict en ontwikkeling: Overleven in de grensgebieden van de globalisering, Gent, Academia Press pp. 65-88, 2008.

- Bogaert, Koenraad,  New State Space Formation in Morocco: The Example of the Bouregreg Valley , Urban Studies, April 12, 2011  Read online

Abstract: Most scholars working on the Arab World typically view the state’s power as something congruent with its cartographic boundaries. Power emerges from an institutional core—the regime—which exerts its hegemony over subordinated institutions, spaces and scales. Thus, the regime presents itself as the privileged site of political formation, intervention and inquiry. The result is a body of scholarship that has largely neglected the dynamics of ‘new state space’ formation at the urban scale. Drawing on the case of the Bouregreg project, a massive high-end urban development scheme positioned between the twin cities of Rabat and Salé, Morocco, this paper investigates the dynamics of agency formation implicated in the creation of a new state space and considers what it reveals about state respatialisation and the rise of new governmental arrangements that have been elided by mainstream accounts on the Middle East and North African region.

- Bogaert, Koenraad,  The problem of slums: shifting methods of neoliberal urban government in Morocco , Development and Change, 42(3), 709-731, 2011

Abstract: The context of this article is the surge in large-scale land acquisitions of African lands by local and foreign investors for commercial food, livestock, oil palm and carbon trading purposes. Involuntary loss of rural lands at scale is not new to Africa's majority rural poor, nor is it driven by a single factor. Historically inequitable land relations within communities, compounded by a century of capitalist transformation, take their toll. This study argues, however, that the weak legal status of communal rights is the most pernicious enabler in their demise, allowing governments to take undue liberties with their citizens’ lands, and particularly those which are unfarmed and by tradition held in common. While international acquiescence to abusive domestic law helps entrench the diminishment of majority land rights, the domestic laws themselves are principally at fault and necessarily the target for change. This legal vulnerability is explored here through an examination of more than twenty African land laws.

- Bogaert, Koenraad,  Marokko zonder sloppenwijken , AGORA, 25 (2), pp.17-20, 2009

Abstract: Kan men een duurzame oplossing vinden voor de problematiek van sloppenwijken in Arabische steden? Of belangrijker: hoe moeten we de programma’s en strategieën daarvoor interpreteren? Het voorbeeld van Marokko toont aan dat het vaak om meer gaat dan enkel de strijd tegen armoede.

- Krijnen, Marieke & Fawaz, Mona,  Exception as the Rule: High-End Developments in Neoliberal Beirut , Built Environment, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp.245-249, 2010.  Read online

Abstract: his paper presents the first findings of ongoing research documenting the changing modalities of governing and organizing the built environment in the past two decades in Lebanon, a phase widely associated with the advent of neoliberalism in the country. Taking building permits as the entry point for an investigation of these modalities, our research shows that in line with trends documented elsewhere, the neoliberal turn has materialized in public interventions deployed at several levels in order to facilitate the circulation of capital to this sector and foster more intensive construction practices. These include changing regulations, delegating planning to private actors, and changing the institutional environment in ways that accommodate the needs of capital. We further argue that additional flexibility is provided to capital through the informalization of public decision-making with regard to planning decisions, meaning more decisions taken by mutual agreement, on an ad hoc basis, at multiple levels of the public hierarchies. Our findings are based on a thorough investigation of the public regulations issued over the past two decades as well as interviews with public sector officials, with developers, and with real estate experts.

- Marlies Casier,  Turkey’s Kurds and the Quest for Recognition. Transnational Politics and the EU-Turkey Accession Negotiations. , Ethnicities, vol. 10 (1): 3-25

Abstract: This is a short summary

- Marlies Casier,  Contesting the ‘truth’ of Turkey’s Human Rights Situation: State-associations interactions in and outside the Southeast. , European Journal of Turkish Studies (online), Vol. 10, 2009  Read online

- Marlies Casier, Andy Hilton and Joost Jongerden ,  “Road Maps” and Roadblocks in Turkey’s Southeast , Published on October 30, 2009 in Middle East Report Online  download
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- Christopher Parker and Pete W. Moore,  The War economy in Iraq  Read online

- Sami Zemni,  Politieke islam, 9/11 en jihad  download

- Sami Zemni ,  The modernity of Islamism and Jihad militancy , Studia Diplomatica Vol. LIX, 2006, No. 1  download

- Christopher Parker,  From forced revolution to failed transition: the nighmarish agency of revolutionary neo-liberalism in Iraq , UNISCI Discussion Papers, Nº 12 (Octubre / October 2006)  download

- Zemni, Sami & Bogaert, Koen,  Morocco and the mirages of democracy and good governance , UNISCI Discussion Paper, n°12, pp. 103-120, 2006.  download
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- Zemni, Sami,  Islam between Jihadi Threats and Islamist Insecurities. Evidence from Belgium and Morocco , Mediterranean Politics, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2, 231-253, 2006  download
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Abstract: Debates on security stand central within academia and policy concerns since 9/11. These debates have redefined the boundaries of post-cold war foreign policy. This article focuses on the Belgian and Moroccan cases to show how security and jihadi ‘threats’ are constitutive of debates that encompass much larger issues including the identity of the state, redefinitions of citizenship and power hierarchies in a changing world. More specifically, it will show how, in the Belgian case, the construction of the jihadi threat has led to a securitization of the policy towards Muslim communities; while, in the Moroccan case, the threat was used to securitize the ongoing political process of liberalization (alternance). In both cases however, these mechanisms of securitization have been doubled by official policies supporting and advocating multiculturalism, tolerance and freedom. The ambivalence between these different policies makes it all the more difficult to devise a clear and effective policy towards the ‘jihad threat’.

- Omar Jabary Salamanca, Mezna Qato, Kareem Rabie, Sobhi Samour ,  Editor's Introduction to Settler Colonial Studies 2(1) 2012 , Settler Colonial Studies 2(1) 2012  Read online

Abstract: This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler colonialism in Palestine organised by the Palestine Society and the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It is our hope that this issue will catalyse creative, collaborative work that puts the settler colonial framework firmly on the agenda of Palestine studies...