"This study is aimed at contributing to streamlining the process of building an integrated knowledge society in accordance with the goals of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It provides a framework and a guide for the design and development of national strategies aimed at the realization and advancement of the knowledge society and knowledge-based economies, and the implementation of such strategies in Arab countries."--P. iii.

Zahlan's detailed study examines recent and current performance of Arab countries and their organizations in scientific research in relation to their socio-economic development. It shows that the Arab countries are severely handicapped by a political economy dominated by technological dependence, corruption, and limited research collaboration.

This volume investigates the agendas and initiatives for using education to transition Gulf communities from being dependent on natural resources into knowledge societies. This volume presents information, case studies and empirical research about the development of information-based economies across the Arabian Gulf as a whole.

The Islamic World and the West - perhaps no other topic is currently so often present in the headlines of the international media. This timely volume, which brings together contributions by 14 established Muslim and Western scholars, intends to present a somewhat more positive outlook in the currently rather strained relations between the Islamic world and Europe by drawing on shared values and possibilities of cooperation in various fields, such as reflected in worldview, education, economics, multiculturalism, religious dialogue, politics, as well as security issues, and it shall also contain a historical revaluation of some of those contacts. It is the first project within the framework of the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between Switzerland's University of Fribourg and the Asia-Europe Institute (AEI) in Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya, Malaysia's oldest university. Dr. Christoph Marcinkowski, is an award-winning scholar working interdisciplinary in Islamic and Middle Eastern, as well as Southeast Asian and Security Studies. He is currently Principal Research Fellow and Chairman of the Publications Committee at the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS), a Malaysian think-tank, and concurrently Adjunct Professor at AEI.

The GCC is a major player in the post-2011 reordering of the Middle East. Despite the rise in prominence of individual Gulf states - especially Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - and the growth of the GCC as a collective entity, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual mechanics of policy-making in the region. This book analyses the vital role that institutions are coming to play in shaping policy in the Gulf Arab states. The research coincides with two key developments that have given institutions new importance in the policy process: the emergence of a new generation of leaders in the Gulf, and the era of low oil prices. Both developments, along with dramatic demographic change, have compelled state and citizens to re-evaluate the nature of the social contract that binds them together. Contributors assess the changing relationship between state and citizen and evaluate the role that formal and informal institutions play in mediating such change and informing policy.The book shows how academic, social and economic institutions are responding to the increasingly complex process of decision-making, where citizens demand better services and further empowerment, and states are obliged to seek wider counsel, although wanting to retain ultimate authority. With contributions from both academics and practitioners, this book will be highly relevant for researchers and policymakers alike.

This is the first book to examine the actual impact of physical and social engineering projects in more than fifty countries from a multidisciplinary perspective. The book brings together an international team of nearly two hundred authors from over two dozen different countries and more than a dozen different social, environmental, and engineering sciences. Together they document and illustrate with case studies, maps and photographs the scale and impacts of many megaprojects and the importance of studying these projects in historical, contemporary and postmodern perspectives. This pioneering book will stimulate interest in examining a variety of both social and physical engineering projects at local, regional, and global scales and from disciplinary and trans-disciplinary perspectives.