German Development Institute – Call for Paper: Social Contracts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – Drivers of Change ­

Social contracts can be defined as the entirety of explicit or implicit agreements between all relevant societal groups and the government on their rights and obligations towards each other (see: https://www.die-gdi.de/en/social-contract/). They exist in every country with a functioning government but they are not always static. Every now and then, they change because of shifts in the framework conditions, the intervention of a foreign actor, a rebellion by the people or other factors. However, there is not yet much systematic research on the question, which factors can bring about changes in social contracts.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) team of the German Development Institute/ Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) will therefore hold a

Workshop on
Social Contracts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – Drivers of Change
in Bonn, Germany, 24-26 August 2022

to discuss methodological avenues and empirical insights to the question.

We invite researchers in any country and from any relevant discipline to submit scholarly written abstracts (500-600 words) of papers in the making to socioeconomic@die-gdi.de before 15 March 2022. Abstracts should provide information on (i) the research question, (ii) the hypothesis, (iii) the methodology and (iv) the expected findings.

We consider publishing some of the presented papers in a journal special issue.

For more information, see here.