Mustafa Menshawy
Biography
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar; University of Westminster, London
Publications
Constructing state, territory, and sovereignty in the Syrian conflictThe article argues that sovereignty claims and counterclaims are still very much at work in international and civil conflicts involving state actors. Focusing on the case of the Syrian conflict, the article engages in methodological triangulation using Critical Discourse Analysis and international relations theories. It finds that the sovereignty-first narrative adopted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and its external allies such as Russia, has built an ‘effective’ discourse that has been adopted in a coherent, consistent, and resonant manner, as well as a ‘credible’ discourse which combined words with actions (i.e. performatives and constatives of sovereignty). The effectiveness and credibility of the sovereignty-first narrative is also judged by the absence of effective and credible contending narratives demonstrated by the tepid application of concepts like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by the United States and its European allies. In making these comparisons, the Syrian conflict can be contextualised by relating it to the Arab Spring and geopolitical shifts in international affairs. It is within this contextualisation that the article demonstrates broader claims about the endurance of the ‘territorial state’ in the Middle East.
Sovereignty alignment process: strategies of regime survival in Egypt, Libya and SyriaSovereignty is an ambiguous concept. It is always saturated with multiple meanings, especially as other concepts are either defined in terms of it or depend on it for their own meanings. It gets more ambiguous as scholars, especially those adopting constructivism as a theory of politics and international relations, move onto divergent paths, creating a gap between theory and practice. The article proposes the sovereignty alignment process as a two-level approach that can clarify sovereignty and its components, including territoriality. The internal level of the alignment process includes disaggregating meanings into frames before aggregating them into master frames that can identify, group and organise different – even contradictory – facets of sovereignty. The external level traces how these sets of meanings interact with the outside world, having its own meaning and discursive opportunity, which can consolidate the actor’s repertoire of meanings on sovereignty. The outside world can also be material, helping to enact or operationalise the articulated meanings by other means, including the use of force or diplomacy. The approach has been devised to analyse the developments of the Arab uprisings, examining how state leaders redefined their identities and interests to survive the sweeping waves of protests against their regimes in 2011 and afterwards.