Reports & Papers

24 Items

Amman, March 2020

AP Photo/Raad Adayleh

Report

Economic and Social Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Middle East and North Africa

| December 2022

Between October 2020 and May 2021, the Middle East Initiative conducted a series of nationally representative surveys to measure the economic, social, and public health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.1 Designed and supervised by Tarek Masoud, Faculty Director of the Middle East Initiative, and Yuree Noh, Research Fellow, the surveys collected responses from 8,500 residents of seven countries in the region—Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. Our goal is to provide the data and insights needed to develop effective policy responses to current and future public health crises.

This report summarizes our findings on how COVID-19 has disrupted employment, mental health, food security, education, and childcare in the region during its first year. We also show that the consequences of the pandemic were felt most acutely by some of the region’s most vulnerable populations: the poor, women, youth, and children.

People stand in a line outside a bank in Beirut, Lebanon, amid a financial crisis and a lockdown imposed by the government to help stem the spread of the coronavirus in Lebanon, March 28, 2020.

AP Photo/Zeina Karam

Paper

Reform Chatter and Democracy

    Authors:
  • Simeon Djankov
  • Ha Nguyen
  • Ivan Yotzov
| March 2021

This paper explores the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. The paper shows that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns. This increase is more significant in democracies. Using instrumental variable techniques, the analysis finds the relationship to be causal. The paper also documents that reform chatter is followed by actual reforms, suggesting that democracies benefit from a “self-correcting” mechanism stemming from changing popular attitudes toward reform. 

Tractors on Westminster bridge

AP/Matt Dunham

Paper - Institut für Sicherheitspolitik

The Global Order After COVID-19

| 2020

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

Report - Middle East Initiative, Belfer Center

The Crisis of the Arab State

August 11, 2015

During the spring 2015 semester, Professor Michael C. Hudson assembled eight leading Middle East scholars under the auspices of the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs to participate in a study group titled Rethinking the Arab State: the Collapse of Legitimacy in Arab Politics. Over the course of the semester these experts used a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to  analyze the crisis of legitimacy of the Arab state in the wake of the 2011 uprisings.

Report - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

Fresh Ideas for the Future: Symposium on the NPT

| April 26, 2015

The abstracts in this booklet summarise the research presented at an academic symposium convened on the sidelines of the 2015 NPT Review Conference. As we write this, journalists and seasoned experts in the nuclear policy field have been speculating about the particularly difficult challenges facing the Review Conference this year. To address those challenges, we would urge all concerned to consider the ideas and analyses presented at this symposium. Experts would be hard-pressed to find a better collection of fresh ideas and approaches for assessing and strengthening the NPT.

Report

Challenges to U.S. Global Leadership

In a Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE session titled "Challenges to US Global Leadership," Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, David Gergen, David Ignatius, and Meghan O’Sullivan discussed challenges as well as opportunities facing the United States. Burns moderated the session.

Challenges include the rise of China and the future of the U.S.-China relationship, the crises taking place around the world, and the reputation of the U.S. worldwide. An unexpected opportunity is the increase in available energy sources in the United States.

Winning the Peace

Photo by Martha Stewart

Report

Winning the Peace

May 16, 2014

The last seven decades without war among the great powers – what historians describe as “the long peace” – is a remarkable achievement. “This is a rare and unusual fact if you look at the last few thousand years of history,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center and moderator of the IDEASpHERE panel “Winning the Peace.” “Furthermore, it is no accident. Wise choices by statesmen have contributed to ‘the long peace,’ which has allowed many generations to live their lives.”

An Iraqi police officer casts his vote at a polling center in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 28, 2014.

AP Images

Paper

Choosing an Electoral System

| April 29, 2014

As the drama of the Middle East’s democratic upheaval unfolds, the design of electoral systems is a crucial but underreported part of the story. Our original analysis of Iraqi elections in 2005 and 2010 demonstrate that small changes in how votes become seats can have a major impact on who governs. As such, they offer critical lessons for those shaping the contours of the democracies struggling to emerge in the Middle East today.

Satellite photo of a uranium-enrichment facility near Qom, Iran

Reuters

Paper

Suspension of Nuclear Activities Is Not End of Diversion Risks

| July 14, 2013

A long-standing goal of diplomacy with Iran is persuading Iran to suspend its enrichment operations while it clarifies its past activities and while negotiations proceed on a more permanent resolution to the nuclear crisis. However, there is problem in using suspension of nuclear material production as a negotiating step: The technical details of suspension have never been clearly defined. The international community needs to be aware of the diversion risks during a suspension of enrichment activities and should mitigate these risks by including the necessary verification measures during negotiations and signing of any agreement on suspension.

Paper

Lessons on the Value of a Military Fellowship, North Korea & Iran's Nuclear Pursuits, and the Evolving Cyberspace Domain

| April 2013

This paper briefly covers three topics of interest—a description of the author's fellowship and its value, how nuclear weapons are still "game changers" on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how the cyberspace domain is reshaping military activities and doctrine in the 21st Century.