In order to soften the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, states have introduced formal tax reliefs in various forms. At the same time, they are encouraging charitable contributions in order to finance relief efforts. In Muslim-majority states, zakat payments make up a significant part of the fiscal politics of social spending – the annual global zakat pool is estimated between 200 billion and 1 trillion USD. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, some states have been encouraging citizens to increase charitable contributions, and tied zakat distribution to pandemic relief. This brings into focus long-standing questions about the position of zakat between charity, formal, and informal taxation. Based on original survey data of over 5,000 respondents in Egypt, Pakistan, and Morocco, the project examines how different forms of state involvement in zakat collection have shaped public attitudes towards taxation, charity and the state during a pandemic. (The paper also has 3 co-authors that are not in the system but will be updated as soon as they are in the system)

The coronavirus pandemic has confronted women all over the world with specific gender-based challenges. A particularly gruesome one is the considerable increase of violence against them especially in the privacy of their homes in the context of confinement. Jordan, where women in the pre-coronavirus period already experienced significant levels of gender-based violence, is no exception to this trend. Stemming from a wider project dealing with local resistance to international injunctions and prescriptions in the field of women’s rights in Jordan, this paper focuses on the pandemic period. It is particularly interested in examining local responses to the rise in domestic violence with a core question: considering that the crisis has significantly disrupted routinized processes in almost every single aspect of social life including at the level of “development cooperation”, did it provide local actors with greater room for devising local responses to gender-based violence, and if so with what resources and from what normative perspectives? Building on fieldwork conducted by local partners notably through interviews with stakeholders, the paper will try to assess whether the crisis has contributed in reinforcing the “local turn” (Mac Ginty and Williams 2009) that was initially driven mostly by the Western actors of development. It hypothesizes that by simultaneously increasing the acuity of gender-based violence and disrupting the usual operation of development cooperation, the coronavirus pandemic has opened up new avenues for local actors to develop more local approaches to the complex problem of violence against women. Differently put, the pandemic context might be a critical juncture in the rebalancing of still asymmetric relationships between Western donors and experts on the one hand and local brokers and actors on the other hand. Building on their extensive experience in resisting their donors’ will in a variety of hidden and not-so-hidden ways, the latter might be gaining a freer hand and a greater experience. The paper will first examine the various actors who have taken the lead in responses to the rise of violence against women in Jordan during the pandemic and then analyze these responses from both their practical and axiological dimensions. This twin analysis will serve to examine whether these responses converge with the substance of earlier resistance by local actors to international injunctions and prescriptions. One step further, the paper will build on actors’ experiences and perceptions to reflect on whereas the “local turn” is in a process of greater local appropriation.

Egypt began making mask wearing mandatory with the 2021 New Year, having tried once before in the first round of the virus. Mask wearing is required inside buildings and on public transportation. Prior to this, not more than 1/4th of people in the streets could be seen sporting masks, most often on their chins. In early February, there is universal masking on public transportation. The government has issued more information on the importance of masks and instituted a system of fines for noncompliance, which still appears to be high. What are Egyptians’ attitudes towards wearing masks? What do they believe? Do they believe the masks help prevent COVID19? Do they believe COVID19 is a serious epidemic? Do they believe God protects them from the virus? Do attitudes towards authority influence the way Egyptian see government information on COVID19? What cultural themes influence mask wearing of the Egyptian public? This research uses qualitative strategies, including participant observation, focus groups and individual interviews and a survey to identify the range of attitudes towards mask wearing. The study looks at information dissemination, information processing, and the communication pathways of how Egyptians make decisions about mask wearing. What beliefs, values, and feelings influence how Egyptians weigh scientific information, in addition to rumors, conspiracy theories, and their community linkages, and government pressure to decide whether to mask or not to mask. Drawing on consumer behavior theory, the study looks at patterns of persuasion, applying the six universal principles of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment, pack mentality, authority, liking and scarcity, identifying which of the persuasion principles seem to be the most salient to behavioral decisions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically shown the importance of functioning governance. Countries where the political leadership initiated counter-infection measures at an early stage were able to protect their citizens comparatively well. According to the University of Oxford’s Coronavirus Government Response Tracker, diverse Arab countries such as Tunisia and Iran had relatively strict measures in place by mid-February 2021, while sanctions in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to name just two, remained largely indecisive. This paper understands the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘systemic risk’ – i.e., highly complex and transboundary in nature with stochastic, largely uncontained trajectories that jeopardize essential systems. Prevalent literature on ‘risk governance’ highlights the importance of ‘systemic answers’ to such threats: governments and societies need a certain level of collaborative capacity to prevent major harm. In a most similar case design, this paper analyses the prevalent patterns of risk governance in four territorial MENA states: Egypt, Jordan and Morocco as authoritarian, lower-middle income countries, plus Tunisia as economically similar vulnerable, but more democratic complement. Following Gaskell and Stoker (2020), four fundamental governance qualities for successful risk governance will be applied to the respective COVID-19 responses: central and decentralized capacities, learning abilities and appreciating difference. The first two refer to the institutional setting of state administrations, the latter two hint at a necessary minimum ability of policymakers and citizens to (re)act flexibly. The responses to the pandemic result from two overarching independent variables: functional leadership (= the performance of policymakers) and socioeconomic potency (= the status of a society). These two conditions inform citizens’ behavior, both in terms of willingness and ability (dependent variable). The level of trust that a society has in its governance structures, works as an intervening variable. Most of the governance qualities required for successful risk containment have been modest in all four countries since decades. When the COVID-19 hit, their economies were already struggling to fulfil people’s basic needs, while political participation had been limited by security-focused, sometimes kleptocratic regimes. Thus, the paper will conclude which long-term effects the pandemic will probably have on the future interactions between the ruling elites and the citizens.