Middle East / North Africa

Given its colonial history, Algeria does not want foreign powers involving themselves in internal affairs.

Successive attempts to institutionalise Islam in France have not resulted in an entirely satisfactory outcome.

During the Cold War, Algeria was one of the Soviet Union’s favored partners. Ties between the two countries deteriorated during the 1990s before going through a renewal around fifteen years ago. 

When President Bouteflika came to power in 1999, he sought to liberalise the country’s economy. But these reforms were reversed after only a few years.

With the Syrian crisis entering its fifth year, the changing security context in Syria and Iraq since the summer of 2014 has highlighted the increasingly important role played by the Kurds as a fighting force against Islamic State (IS). In a more general context of renewed Russian influence in...

After the war between Israel and Hezbollah during the summer of 2006, a deterrence strategy was established between the two parties. Occasional subsequent crises have thereby been contained and have been prevented from escalating into extensive confrontations. 

The Islamic State has considerable income, mostly from taking control of banks; managing trafficking networks – particularly hydrocarbons – and from external support. 

Libya is in chaos, divided by geographic, ethnic, economic, and religious rifts, with two militia supported governments, each trying to take control of the country’s oil fields.

Brazil’s economy is currently undergoing the effects of a double whammy.

A general economic model of understanding Middle Eastern states was elaborated by political scientists around the 1980’s, based on the concept of rent as a factor of wealth around which the economic model as much as the governance of energy-rich countries was re-organized. The particular case...