Research

A policy paper by former MEI Visiting Scholar Hedi Larbi on the need to enhance regional cooperation and build towards an integrated infrastructure in the Middle East to promote growth and unity in the region.

During the fall 2015 semester, former Minister Hedi Larbi convened eight distinguished experts, each with direct operational and academic experience in Arab countries and economies to participate in a study group titled Rewriting the Arab Social Contract: Toward Inclusive Development and Politics in the Arab World. Over the course of seven sessions during the semester, these experts contributed  to an integrated approach to the historical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the Arab uprisings, focusing in particular on the often overlooked economic and social issues at the root of the uprisings.

This collective policy paper summarizes the main themes of Morocco's recent experience around migration policy. It draws upon many conversations with major stakeholders, group work, and site visits of the 16 Harvard students who participated in the winter field study course in Morocco and Italy, led by Prof. Claude Bruderlein and supported by the Middle East Initiative.

"The scholarly literature has long argued that one of the reasons that parties like the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt are able to earn the loyalties of voters is through their provision of health, welfare, and educational services that the cash-strapped states of the Arab world are increasingly unable (or unwilling) to provide. However, in recent years, the provision of social services by Islamist parties has gone from being an explanation of Islamist success to something to be explained in itself."

The Middle East Initiative supported “The Pulse of the Arab Street,” a two-day workshop led by Professor Ishac Diwan from April 3-4, 2014. The objective of the workshop, organized by the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and Silatech, was to provide a platform for discussing the political economy of transformation in the Arab world. The workshop convened a team of researchers with a deep understanding of the region and its specificities, who seek to fill an existing gap in rigorous, quantitative, evidence-based research on the political economy of contemporary Arab societies.

"Cybersecurity is a means to enable social stability and promote digital democracy; a method by which to govern the Internet; and a process by which to secure critical infrastructure from cybercrime, cyberespionage, cyberterrorism and cyberwar. As nations and corporations recognize their dependence on ICT, policymakers must find the proper balance in protecting their investments without strangling future growth."

This paper argues that in order to mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change, policy makers must actively remove obstacles to local mobilization of resources, allow private sector participation under adequate and transparent regulation, and provide a supportive context for community-level adaptations.

Given the importance of developing a democratic culture for the long-term survival of democracy, it is crucial to understand how support for democracy changes over time in response to different events.  Although democratic transitions vary greatly by case, one common element to each transition, and often the first major event signaling a transition, is the holding of a reasonably free and fair election.  Yet, while there is a significant literature on the effect of elections on public opinion in developed democracies, this topic has received far less attention in transitioning and authoritarian countries.  This paper addresses this hole in the literature by examining the effects of the first relatively free and fair election in a country’s history on support for democracy among ordinary citizens. It finds that groups that are excluded from participation in the election and individuals who believe that an election was not free and fair also lose support for democracy.

The Arab World Competitiveness Report 2007, released by the World Economic Forum was co-authored by Dr. Tarik Yousef, DI Senior Fellow and Dean of the Dubai School of Government. The report states that the United Arab Emirates is the most competitive economy in the Arab world among the countries at the third and most advanced stage of development.