Category: Middle East/North Africa

Can Jordan’s autocratic regime democratize?

     

A recent change of government and looming parliamentary elections brings Jordan, a vital U.S. ally, back into policy discussions, say analysts Sean Yom and Wael Al-Khatib. And, inevitably, pundits will… Read more »

MidEast governments’ hostility to foreign analysts prompts protest

     

  Middle Eastern governments and media are demonstrating increasing hostility to foreign researchers and journalists, according to an open letter signed by a group of distinguished scholars, academics, journalists, and… Read more »

Is the U.S. giving up on supporting democracy abroad?

     

Serious pessimism about democracy’s global fortunes as well as skepticism about the value and wisdom of democracy promotion have gripped Washington, argues Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the… Read more »

Syria’s opposition unveils transition plan

     

  Syria’s main opposition negotiating group would reject any deal struck by Russia and the United States on Syria’s fate that was very different from its own proposed transition plan,… Read more »

Welcome to demokrasi: Turkey’s ‘new form’ of illiberal democracy

     

After a decade in power, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presides over a new form of democracy that the west neither likes nor understands: an authoritarian regime that exalts the… Read more »

Tunisian party ‘separating Islam from politics’

     

The Ennahda movement has renounced political Islam and fully embraced Tunisia’s secular order, seeking to work within it, Taylor Luck reports for The Christian Science Monitor: Ennahda’s journey from a… Read more »