Middle East & North Africa

123 Items

Arab Spring at 10

James A. Dawson

Analysis & Opinions - Journal of Democracy

The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?

| Jan. 01, 2021

Ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa are torn between two visions of progress: a democratic one that seeks to replace the leaders who dominate the region, and an ostensibly modernizing one that seeks to replace the people who inhabit it. Though the latter project is currently ascendant, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. Arab publics may be ambivalent about democracy, but the region retains considerable democratic potential.

A crowd gathers on Tunis' main avenue, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. Tunisian polling agencies are forecasting that conservative law professor Kais Saied has overwhelmingly won the North African country's presidential election.

AP Photo/Hassene Dridi

Analysis & Opinions - Harvard Kennedy School Magazine

A Fragile State

| Feb. 04, 2020

PRIOR TO THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP, and the current season of hand- wringing about democracy’s prospects for survival in the United States and Europe, Western social scientists tended to think of democracy as something “we” had achieved and “they”—that is, the peoples of the so-called developing world—had yet to grasp. The hypothesized reasons for this gap between “us” and “them” were many.

Analysis & Opinions - Agence Global

Jordan faces its historical reckoning

| July 31, 2018

The streets of Amman today appear calm and everyone seems to be going about their business as usual. But just two months ago, the country faced massive protests which mirrored others it had seen before. The script of the May-June events developed along the usual lines: public protests over price increases made the king dismiss the government, freeze price increases, name a new prime minister, and ask for fresh reforms.

News

Inside the Middle East Q&A: Hicham Alaoui on Democracy, Opposition, and Institutions in North Africa and the Middle East

November 29, 2017

Excerpt from an October 24th installment of the “Inside the Middle East" Q&A Series, with Hicham Alaoui, Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and D.Phil. Candidate at Oxford University, on current trends in North African politics including Tunisia’s nascent democracy, North Africa’s unique position in the Middle East region, and the ongoing protests in Morocco’s Rif region.

iranians shopping in bazaar

AP

Analysis & Opinions

Economic challenges loom in Rohani’s second term

| May 28, 2017

Despite its flaws, the May 19 presidential election offered Iranian voters a real choice between the moderate incumbent President Hassan Rohani and a hard-line rival, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raeisi. Djavad Salehi-Isfahani writes to The Arab Weekly that Rohani’s decisive win with 57% of the vote, combined with a sweep by reformist candidates in the city council elections in Tehran and several other major cities, gives him a strong mandate to move for­ward with his program of eco­nomic reform.

President Rouhani addresses the 68th UN General Assembly in New York, before holding a private dinner at the UN Hotel (2013).

Reuters

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

Could the Iranian Economy Sink Rouhani?

| May 15, 2017

For a “managed democracy,” Iran holds remarkably unpredictable presidential elections. And the upcoming election on May 19 is no exception, given that the incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, is facing a tough conservative challenger, Ebrahim Raesi. In this column to Project Syndicate, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, visiting scholar at the Belfer Center's Iran Project, writes about Rouhani's economic weaknesses and the challenges he faces for reelection. 

A Russian military medic inspects a patient near the village of Maarzaf, 15 kilometers northwest of Hama, in Syria, Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin

News

Podcast: Humanitarian Negotiations Series: Negotiation with Non-State Armed Groups at the Frontlines

Dec. 21, 2016

A podcast from the Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action produced from a Middle East Initiative event on humanitarian negotiations with non-state armed groups featuring Professor Claude Bruderlein; Ashley Jackson; Stig Jarle Hansen; and Abdi Ismail Isse.

teaser image

Journal Article

Preference for Democracy in the Arab World

| Dec. 14, 2016

We take a new look at the question of the Arab democratic exception by looking at the preference for democracy among individuals in the Arab world in a comparative context. We use the new sixth wave of the World Value Survey, which was collected between 2012 and 2013, and which included for the first time 12 Arab countries (up from only four in wave 5) and 68 non-Arab countries.