Did Egypt's Parliamentary Election just trump citizens’ rights? Arab Citizenship Review No. 12, 19 November 2015

Since the Muslim Brotherhood rule was toppled in July 2013, the regime of President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi has strived to consolidate his one-man rule; he painted the political opposition and civil society as traitors and foreign agents and exploited the fight against terrorism to suppress freedom of expression, justify a crackdown on the press, eclipse justice in courtrooms, throw thousands in prison, and tighten his grip on police forces. The regime has postponed parliamentary elections for some time, while it marginalised and weakened the non-Islamist political parties that helped Sisi take power. He did so by promoting electoral lists with candidates who are loyal to the president, to ensure control over the new assembly and by obstructing any political alliance that could form an opposition. At the same time, the security apparatus has been given free rein to control the public sphere and engineer the electoral process. This may ultimately lead to a parliament that includes no advocates for rights and liberties, which is particularly significant since the incoming assembly will review the huge amount of legislation that President Sisi has issued in the absence of a parliament. In addition, shortly before elections, President Sisi raised questions about the constitution, calling for it to be amended to reduce the powers of the parliament and increase those of the president. It is thus clear that Sisi seeks not only to consolidate his regime, without political opposition, but to free his rule of any effective oversight from society or parliament.

Executives as Agents: Expatriate managers in subsidiaries of multinational banks. ACES Working Papers, June 2012

Performance and behavior between domestic and foreign-owned banks are grounded in assumptions about the ability of parent banks to provide subsidiaries with capital and knowledge and to manage asymmetric information and agency problems in the parent-subsidiary relationship. We complement research on internal capital markets and investigate how foreign owners of banks in emerging markets use their power to appoint executives at their subsidiaries to manage agency problems in the parent-subsidiary relationship. We find that perceived corruption and poor ICRG risk scores are associated with the appointment of parent-country executives as supervisors on behalf of the foreign owner. By contrast, a focus on retail clients, the absence of organizational routines and poor creditor rights are associated with the appointment of host-country executives. These bank and country characteristics create agency problems within the subsidiary, but not necessarily between the subsidiary and its parent. As such, they create a need for host-country executives’ superior knowledge of local markets and staff rather than for the supervisory role of parent-country executives.

La protection des données à caractère personnel dans le cadre des activités d’une mission civile de gestion de crise ou la recherche de « l’inaccessible étoile » ? Data Protection within the context of one ESDP Mission - The search for the unreachable star

La question de la protection des données à caractère personnel posée dans le cadre des activités d’assistance et de soutien des missions civiles de gestion de crise ne semble guère avoir suscité l’intérêt des instances en charge de leur gestion et ce en dépit de son importance majeure au regard des tâches exécutées quotidiennement par les agents de ces missions dans le domaine de la coopération policière et judiciaire en matière pénale. S’appuyant sur une expérience de terrain, l’auteur s’efforcera, dans ces lignes, de démontrer la nécessité d’entamer une réflexion de fond sur ce sujet afin, le cas échéant, de prendre les initiatives utiles destinées à porter remède aux difficultés qui, en ce domaine, pourraient apparaître.