The inquiry at hand focuses on larger narratives that have managed to discourage uprisings from happening in the first place. It focuses on aspects of the country's spatiality that are usually accorded little attention - large, pervasive, and enveloping initiatives that are seen to improve the old and bring about the new - aspects which are often overlooked either because they are thought of in positive terms, even by local Moroccans, or because they are so gargantuan in scale, literally spanning the entire country in some instances, that academic analysis often finds it difficult to relate them to more localized and isolated events. It is the ambition here to at least shed some light on these larger, perhaps banal, aspects of Morocco’s physical environment, where, upon examination, the state's spatial tactics are found to be most evident and most effective

The inquiry at hand focuses on larger narratives that have managed to discourage uprisings from happening in the first place. It focuses on aspects of the country's spatiality that are usually accorded little attention - large, pervasive, and enveloping initiatives that are seen to improve the old and bring about the new - aspects which are often overlooked either because they are thought of in positive terms, even by local Moroccans, or because they are so gargantuan in scale, literally spanning the entire country in some instances, that academic analysis often finds it difficult to relate them to more localized and isolated events. It is the ambition here to at least shed some light on these larger, perhaps banal, aspects of Morocco’s physical environment, where, upon examination, the state's spatial tactics are found to be most evident and most effective

This perceived link is capitalized upon by the Moroccan monarchy; it employs, in sync with the country’s landscape of indigenous architecture, an elaborate system of state rituals and ceremonies, traditional fashion choices, titles and honors, among other strategies, all in order to preserve a constructed image in which the monarchy is not only inseparable from the nation’s Islamic heritage, but also from the very historical foundations of Morocco

Don't announce your plans. This may be tough, but you're better served keeping your mouth shut. This may have been Qaddafi's most serious mistake

This is a lesson that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has learned well.

Rather than threatening to kill traitors to the regime, he blandly noted that "there are security situations that require the interference of security institutions." Who could object to whatever that means?

"Nothing to invest. No businesses. No land. Nothing." His words make up the refrain to Tunisia's desperately undeveloped and long-neglected interior region, the birthplace of the Arab spring. What have the revolutionaries gotten out of their revolution?

During Ben Ali's 23-year rule, Tunisia focused 90 percent of its investment projects on the coastal regions, leaving the interior disproportionately underdeveloped. Unemployment in the region has increased to 18 percent, twice the rate on the coast, and while Tunisia's average national poverty rate is 18 percent, it ranges from 6 percent in Tunis to more than 30 percent in the center-west governorates.

Bread riots in December 1983 in the same cities launched the most serious challenge to the Tunisian regime. If things don't improve, as seems grimly likely, rebellion may return.

The king's constitutional reforms will transfer most authority to an elected prime minister, who will have the power to appoint and dismiss ministers and state officials. The new Moroccan parliament, in effect, will have the same powers as representative assemblies of developed democracies -- complete with a bicameral legislature akin to U.S. Congress.

the constitutional reforms include the guarantee of an independent judiciary and a new commitment to combat corruption.

The February 20 protest movement has thus acted as an accelerator, not a catalyst. Unlike in other Arab countries, most protesters did not call for the fall of the monarchy, but simply demanded the end of absolutism and corruption.

Dictators watch Al Jazeera too

The region’s rulers have gone through an accelerated process of authoritarian learning,

Regimes have adapted tactics,

The essays were supposedly an inspiration for the Turkish party’s so far deft strategy of being a mildly Islamist government in a resolutely secular state.

Overwhelmingly, Tunisians insist that their revolution was a spontaneous, youth-driven affair, propelled by the anomie felt amidst rising education, rising expectations and rising unemployment. Facebook activists amplified the voices of revolt i

But to claim for Nahda a privileged place in the “pressure” that caused the revolution is to invent a lineage that does not exist -- and many Tunisians resent the attempt.

asabiyya

in Ibn Khaldun’s time every dynasty bore within itself the seeds of decline, as rulers degenerated into tyrants or became corrupted by luxurious living.

The Ottoman governors regarded them as nonbelievers and tools of the Shiite Persians: they were not even accorded the dignity of a millet, or recognized religious community