Nils Butenschøn

The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World

The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World provides crucial insights into the current political, social and cultural crisis in the Middle East and North Africa by analysing histories, concepts, and practices of citizenship and the mechanisms that undermined them.

Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The “Arab Spring” as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics

The basic characteristics and historic significance of the Arab uprisings of 2010–2011 are given a multitude of interpretations, not least in light of the dramatic events that have followed. This article seeks to understand the uprisings as expressions of an unfolding crisis in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in the region within a historic-sociological approach to citizenship as a “contractual relationship.” A brief discussion of Egyptian developments is used to illustrate the approach. The mass mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s inspired by Nasserism and the “authoritarian bargaining” introduced at the time is contrasted with the demands for a new social contract that mobilized millions during the recent uprisings. The uprisings clearly represent a critical juncture in contemporary Arab history, but their long-term impact on the direction of the future political order in the Arab region remains an open question.

Do Minority and Group Rights Promote Just Stability in Non-Unitary Political Orders? A Research Agenda

Much has been achieved with regard to the specification of minority and group rights as well as other international legal human rights norms. The positivation of human rights thus secure, many now urge that the next move must be to promote realistion of such human rights regimes. This crucial task may well face special challenges in states whose constitutions unbundle sovereignty into multi-level or multi-national political orders. One important research topic is therefore whether minority and group rights secure their objectives in de jure non-unitary political orders, whose populations sharply divide along ethnic, national, religious or linguistic lines. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the central research challenges that arise. The first section lays out some of the central organising elements of this presentation, while sections 2 and 3 draws on existing literature to elaborate some central concepts and distinctions, and present some of the most prominent competing hypotheses as to whether minority and group rights facilitate the creation of non-unitary political orders, and their stability once arrived at. The presentation elaborates on how minority and group rights may affect several mechanisms of socialisation to human rights and compliance with these complex political orders. The aim is to facilitate legal and social science research that may help assess these claims, and their scope conditions – and thereby help assess the efficacy of minority and group rights in these non-unitary polities. Other contributors – in this special issue and elsewhere – provide case studies that may serve to test and delimit these hypotheses.

Israeli ethnocracy and the Israel-Palestine citizenship complex

This chapter has three main parts. First, an attempt is made to identify basic principles of Israeli citizenship as it emerged in the extraordinary context of Zionist state-building in Palestine in the years prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Second, I discuss how ‘three generations’ of Israeli political sociologists have conceptualised the relationship between the state and its citizens (and non-citizens). Finally, based on some of my earlier studies, I present a conceptualisation of Israel as an ethnocracy within the Israel-Palestine Citizenship Complex, demonstrating the interrelatedness of Israeli and Palestinian citizenship as elements not only in an intractable conflict but also in the future political organisation of state authority in Israel-Palestine.2

Minority and Group Rights to Accomodate Difference: Approaches and Applications

This special issue of the International Journal of Minority and Group Rights contains articles based on research by contributors to the project ‘Accommodating Difference. Human Rights, Citizenship and Identity in Diverse Societies’. It is a cross-disciplinary project based at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo in collaboration with Christian Michelsen’s Institute, Bergen and with core funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The articles included in this issue explore whether, how and under what conditions human rights may affect the establishment and stability of non-unitary political orders that encompass populations sharply divided along ethnic, national, religious or linguistic lines. Such population segments are often constituted as legal subjects or political categories in contemporary states. In many cases the position and rights of such collectivities are not considered problematic and do not challenge political stability. In other cases inter-group tensions or conflicts between groups and state authorities may threaten the integrity of states, the fundamental rights of minorities or groups, and in some instances affect regional or international peace and stability. The articles focus on the question of whether human rights that seek to protect the integrity and sustainability of societal sub-units organized along socio-cultural divisions, assist or hinder the realization of the objectives stated in the relevant human rights conventions: a just, lawful and peaceful order and self-determination for all peoples. The project thus brings a human rights perspective to bear on the challenges of just accommodation in multi-level political orders, bringing together two topics that has lately received much attention.

The political geography of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process

The article outlines the historical and geographical background of the conflict in Palestine. International proposals for sharing Palestine between Jews and Arabs have alternated between two main alternatives: partition involving a two-state solution, or power-sharing within a single sovereign state. The realism of these alternatives is assessed in relation to the ongoing peace negotiations.