Suchergebnisse

The achievement of an effective infrastructure, reliable and fair, is essential for economic growth. Indeed, the transport infrastructure is essential to the prosperity of regions. To investigate the relationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth, we use the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL), we find that transport infrastructure is cointegrated with economic performance, indicating the affirmed presence of long-run equilibrium relationships among them. We use annual data for the period from 1980 to 2013. The study found that the transport infrastructure and investment in transport infrastructure in Tunisia have a significant positive contribution to growth, which shows that each impact is strong and statistically significant. The Tunisian experience suggests that it is necessary to design an economic policy that will improve the transport infrastructure and to increase investment made to the sector for sustainable economic growth in Tunisia. It is necessary to improve the existing road and rail networks. JEL Classification: F63, L91, R41

There is no doubt that one of the most contentious terrains of contestation in the supposed clash of values between Islamism and western values is the role of women in society. Thus, the issue of women's rights has become the litmus test for Arab societies with respect to the current zeitgeist of human rights in the age of democracy and liberalism. There is today a stereotypical view of debates surrounding women's rights in the Arab world where two distinct camps are in conflict with each other. On the one hand there are 'globalised' liberal and secular actors that strive for women's rights and therefore democracy, while on the other are obscurantist movements that are anchored in religious tradition, resist globalisation and are therefore autocratic by assumption. This article challenges this view and through an empirical study of the changes to the Code of Personal Status in Tunisia and Morocco it demonstrates that the issue of women's rights is far more complex and, in particular, it finds that there is a very significant decoupling between women's rights and democracy in the region, despite a progressive liberal shift in the gender equality agenda.

This article studies Egyptian and Tunisian transitions by investigating the effect of two factors, namely electoral system choice and the presence of competitive oppositionparties. It suggests that, between 2011 and 2015, the electoral system choice and the presence of competitive political parties contributed to the transition to democracy inTunisia while the same two factors were causes of the failed transition in Egypt. It concludes by arguing that during transitional phases, electoral system choice andpresence of competitive political parties help institutionalization of normal, limited political uncertainty in a polity. Accordingly, these two factors compel cooperation andnegotiation between different political actors, which in turn help democracy survive transitions.