As part of the 12th Mediterranean Research Meeting 2011 (Florance/ Italy) we are directing a workshop: Informal Challenges to the MENA Formal Politics.
The study of informal institutions and informal politics is now common in political analyses. These research mainly analyse the cases from East Asia, Russia and former Soviet Republics (Tamada 1991; Dittmer 1995 and Dittmer et al. 2000; Cheng and Womack 1996; Chabal et al. 2004; Gelman 2004; Isaacs 2010). Informal institutions, now active players of political life, assume importance upon appreciation of the holistic nature of political behaviour, which cannot be fully understood without attention both to the formal and informal components of political systems. In spite of the richness in terms of the influence of informal institutions on formal politics of the region, literature on Middle Eastern politics takes little account of informal institutions and informal politics.
This is due in large part to the difficulty for the scholar to penetrate into the tangle of unwritten codes, traditions and networks. Moreover, political scientists have been concentrated on the state and its institutions. Our workshop explores the varieties and opportunities the informal institutions of the region offers -from proxy leadership system in Turkey to the Islamic welfare networks in several regional states. The central aim of the workshop is a comparative empirical study that would answer the following questions within the MENA context:
What are the existing structural explanations for the dominance of informal institutions in the region?
What is the influence of informal political actors on formal political processes in the region?
How do informal institutions organise to exert pressure on formal political institutions?
How do informal and formal institutions interact and/or struggle to organise domestic politics of the particular country?
What kind of political and social arrangements involving informal and formal institutions are formed?
What are the challenges and support given by informal politics to the state authority?
In this vein, we are looking for potential scholars and/or practitioners working on informal politics in Mediterranean. The general call, detailed workshop description and the details for application process could be found at the following web address: http://www.eui.eu/RSCAS/Med/mrm2011/
About Workshop 03: http://www.eui.eu/DepartmentsAndCentres/RobertSchumanCentre/Research/InternationalTransnationalRelations/MediterraneanProgramme/MRM/MRM2011/ws03.aspx
Please feel free to print out the poster (see MRM website) and distribute to colleagues / hang it where you find it appropriate.
Please find below important deadlines:
15 July 2010: Deadline for the submission of paper proposals both for directors and participants.
Applications can only be submitted on-line through the electronic application form available at the above-mentioned web address.
When the Call for Papers has closed on 15 July, you will receive a link to access the database that contains applications for your workshop.
1 September 2010: Final list of selected workshop participants to be provided by workshop directors.
15 February 2011 (amendmed from previous date): Directors and participants must submit the final versions of their papers no later than this date.
Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.
With our best wishes,
Michalengelo Guida
Fatih University, Istanbul TURKEY
mguida@fatih.edu.tr
Bezen Balamir Coskun
Zirve University, Gaziantep TURKEY
bezenbalamir@gmail.com
Please quote 10 Academic Resources Daily in your application to this opportunity!
