Many observers regarded 1999 as a year of progress for democracy in the Arab world. There is reason to doubt, however, whether any meaningful change has really occurred.
About the Author
Emmanuel Sivan is professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works, including Radical Islam (1990) and Mythes politiques arabes (1995), and the editor of War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (1999).
The upheavals that have been shaking the Arab-Muslim world are revolutions in discourse as well as in the streets. Arabs are using not only traditional and religious vocabularies, but also…
Popular uprisings have occurred only in some Arab states and in even fewer have authoritarian rulers been overthrown. What factors allow us to predict whether an authoritarian regime will be…
