The literature on democratization and authoritarian survival has rightfully studied the role external forces play in such processes. These external actors and structural constraints are said to be especially substantial when dealing with small and poor authoritarian states. Although this literature acknowledges that small states are not entirely powerless when confronting hegemonic external forces, little effort has been made to refine and specify the role they play and the actions they undertake to engage international democratization pressures. This paper addresses this lacuna by using the framing approach and the concept of “extraversion” to analyze the process by which weak African authoritarian states draw on and change the representations that Western powers hold about them. These representations provide a specific lens through which Western governments and experts look at political dynamics in developing countries, and eventually shape policies toward these countries. This paper analyzes how two small authoritarian African regimes, Guinea and Mauritania, have enacted a series of performances such as the arrests of alleged “Islamists,”“warlords,” and other transnational “subversive threats,” thereby framing their domestic and foreign policies in ways that can resonate with hegemonic international discourses, seeking to obtain either more support from Western states or to lower their democratization pressure (or both).

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Substantial research effort over the past few decades has aimed to explain how young people understand, feel, and participate in politics. However, this growing literature remains fragmented across several research disciplines, including psychology. This article proposes youth political engagement (YPE) as a concept that can be used to capture the varying forms of political expressions under a unifying theme in adolescence. The objectives of this review are to define YPE, to outline the conceptual structure of YPE, to consider how YPE may develop from diverse antecedents, and to offer directions for future research. Overall, YPE offers a unifying theme of research to better understand the political sphere of adolescent development.

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Quels sont les significations et les enjeux politiques que revêt le concept d’islamisme en Mauritanie ? Pour répondre à cette question, cet article présente d’abord les événements politiques récents par lesquels s’est constitué un « récit islamiste ». Il analyse ensuite les racines discursives historiques des termes qui sont utilisés par les autorités étatiques à l’ère de la « guerre contre la terreur ». Nous posons l’hypothèse que la mise en récit actuelle de l’islamisme s’articule, du moins en partie, à des schèmes plus anciens, notamment ceux de la dernière phase de l’ère coloniale qui ont été réactivés au début de la période de libéralisation des années 1990. Les catégories dichotomiques, qui opposent un islam dit local et loyal à un islam extrémiste et étranger, ne datent pas de l’ère du « 11 Septembre ».