Middle East & North Africa

The Moroccan regime has used repression to successfully contain numerous types of opposition. Although research on its repressive policies is now extensive, impartial scholarly work that systematically examines its rational use of repression remains limited. This article addresses this gap by investigating the causal mechanisms behind the regime's repression of opposition actors between 1956 and 2018. Examining these mechanisms sheds light on the multilevel games between ruling actors and opposition groups during various opposition events and shows that liberalization does not ensure the reduced use of repression. Rather, repression remains a strategic policy employed by the regime to pursue important political objectives such as maintaining power.

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.

Stephen Walt unpacks foreign-imposed regime change and concludes that if the United States can't stop COVID-19 transmission at home, there is no reason to think it should ever try running another country.

The coronavirus pandemic has already devastated the international economy.  Stephen Walt explores what history and theory say about the military fallout.

The spread of the coronavirus is scary everywhere. But in Syria, which has faced war for more than nine years, humanitarian aid and health care is already stretched razor-thin.

We’re living in the information age. But when it comes to fundamental change in society, organized industrial workers remain a powerful, bedrock force. And that’s just as true in Iran as in other modern nations.

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.

Unlike the Iraq war of 2003 when Europe was split in its support of the US, all of Europe now disagrees with the American approach to Iran. If the US were to use military force, there would be no European support and the sad likelihood of unifying Europe on an anti-American basis.

Audio recording of a May 1, seminar with Hugh Roberts, Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History, Tufts University.