April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Everything we know about getting and keeping democracy suggests we should be, at best, cautious about the prospects for Syria’s democratic future. But, as this collection of essays suggests, there are reasons for hope.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Syrians rejoiced when Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell. After decades of dictatorship and civil war, Syrians must now rebuild their country while seeking justice for the victims of authoritarian rule.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
After the collapse of the Assad regime, Syria stands at a crossroads. Nothing is assured, but the country’s civil society is its best hope for charting a democratic future.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Despite a brutal thirteen-year civil war, Syrians are not building from scratch. In fact, Syria has a long and rich history of state-building to guide them.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Egypt’s general-turned-president has spent lavishly, cemented the military’s political and economic control, and, afraid of suffering Mubarak’s fate, become increasingly repressive. But with crushing inflation and everyday people suffering, is Sisi losing his grip?
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are spreading their influence across borders. A new dangerous chapter between the Gulf monarchies and the West has begun.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
Turkey’s economic and political crises have only worsened, but the autocratic president remains in power. His secret? He uses the levers of the state to shield his supporters from harm, while punishing the rest.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
The opposition thought they had Turkey’s autocratic president on the ropes. But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s brand of authoritarian populism triumphed. A more divisive and repressive chapter will almost surely follow.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
When Israel’s new government introduced proposals that threatened the judiciary’s independence, the country erupted in protest. These tensions will not soon end. Likud, once a center-right party, is now as populist as the European far right.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
This Arab state is different. It is far more liberal than any other Gulf kingdom, and it may even have a path, with much trial and effort, to becoming the region’s first democratic constitutional monarchy.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
There have been numerous waves of protest against the country’s corrupt theocracy. This time is different. It is a movement to reclaim life. Whatever happens, there is no going back.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Although Saddam fell twenty years ago, the politicians who have come after him still think like Baathists. But a new generation has begun making itself heard. It believes in Iraq as a nation and it understands democracy as more than a source of spoils to be divided among groups.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
The global democratic decline of the last two decades is rarely discussed in the same breath with the 2003 decision by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq. But the roots of our present disorder can be traced to that disastrous and foolhardy war of choice.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Iraq today is more of a democracy than most people think, but still less of a democracy than it could be. While its future is uncertain, one thing is not: It will be determined by Iraqis.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
President Kais Saied’s power grab has crushed Tunisian democracy, returning the country to the old playbook of Arab dictators past and present.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Tunisia’s once-promising democratic transition had long failed to de-liver on its promises. It was a crisis waiting to be exploited. Kais Saied is simply the man who set it aflame.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The country’s armed forces opened the door to democracy, only to help slam it shut a decade later. A desire for prestige and political influence has turned them into an autocrat’s accomplice.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Turkey’s ruling party has developed a new tool: When its local candidates lose, it dismisses them and appoints its own choice under a guise that maintains the veneer of democracy. It is an autocratic innovation that may soon spread.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Mass uprisings toppled dictators in both Sudan and Algeria in 2019, but only Sudan was able to secure a transition to democracy due to important differences in their protest movements, militaries, and the role of the international community.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
A decade ago, Arab peoples stood up and sought to replace their rulers with a more democratic political project. But Arab autocrats have a project of their own. Can the people gain ground in the struggle for self-government, or will their rulers bear it away?
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The Islamic Republic is in a volatile, even prerevolutionary situation, hammered by foreign opposition and sanctions from the outside, and the disillusionment and discontent of its own people from within. But a catalyst needs to appear.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
A review of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman, by Ben Hubbard.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Is there a recipe for defeating a populist? A novel campaign strategy based on inclusion and public responsiveness may show how to beat the odds in a competitive authoritarian system.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
A domestic pact may be needed to end a dictatorship, but what happens when that pact itself becomes one of the chief obstacles to deeper democratization?
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Algeria’s massive wave of protesters wanted to put an end to sham elections. While the leaderless movement succeeded for a time, its failure showcased the lengths to which a country’s ruling elite will go to maintain its hold on power.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Iran is in the midst of an ideological crisis. Growing numbers of Iranians are rejecting the religious underpinnings of the Supreme Leader’s rule, and turning their backs on the Islamic Republic. The regime’s only response is harsher repression—a response that will deepen the anger that is bringing everyday Iranians out into the streets.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Demonstrators in Algeria and Sudan have drawn on the experiences of earlier Arab protest movements in their efforts to push for lasting change.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
Amid mass protests, the personalist autocracy of longtime Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir fell to an April 2019 coup. With the country now being governed by a council composed of both opposition leaders and powerful security-service coupmakers, prospects for democratization remain uncertain.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
In 2011–13, the undemocratic political outlook of both secular and Islamist actors helped to ensure the failure of democracy in Egypt. Today, the populace appears to have backed away from democratic demands, yet pockets of resilient activism offer a basis for hope.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
The military-backed regime of President al-Sisi seems secure, but study of the Egyptian internet reveals that the regime has failed to win over the young.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
A review of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly by Safwan M. Masri.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
The president of Tunisia’s Ennahdha party, Rached Ghannouchi, argues that the solution to extremism is more (not less) freedom and democracy, along with more moderate religious teachings.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
A review of Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed by Misagh Parsa.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Tunisia is now one of the Arab world’s most democratic countries, but it has also been producing worrisome numbers of recruits for groups such as ISIS. How can this paradox be explained?
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Despite all its flaws, Iran’s May 2017 presidential balloting amounted to another small but genuine advance for the cause of democracy.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Wrongly viewed by many media sources as a victory for “reform” and “openness,” the recent presidential election in Iran actually reflected the demoralization and disengagement of the country’s prodemocratic opposition.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Two of the Arab world’s more liberal regimes, the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, are sometimes said to be evolving toward democracy. Is this true, and what are the longer-term prospects for these two monarchies?
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Ennahda has long felt an especially strong kinship with Turkey’s AKP, which has seen as representing a combination of piety, prosperity, and democratic credibility. How might their relationship be affected by the AKP's more recent authoritarian turn?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Tunisia is a small country, but its influential Islamist party has taken a big step by separating its political wing from its religious activities.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian stripes are fed up with the ineptitude and corruption of their political leaders, parties, and government institutions.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
In power since 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed as if it might be losing its hold when Turkish voters went to the polls in June 2015. Yet that “hung election” gave way to another contest in November, and the AKP came roaring back.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
We are still struggling to understand the mostly bitter harvest of the Arab Spring, but there are a few lessons that can be drawn.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Data from the Arab Barometer suggest that Arabs have not rejected democracy. In fact, they still by and large believe in it and want it.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
The Arab experience shows that the same media that facilitate the toppling of dictators can make it harder to build democracy.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Islamic political parties were not especially popular with voters in Muslim-majority countries before the Arab Spring. Has that changed?
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
How did a potent Islamist movement come to accept a non-Islamist constitution? The answer lies in that movement’s self-protective reflexes.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
A close look at secular parties in the Middle East today raises doubts about whether they are ready for prime time.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Iran’s authoritarianism is more flexible and more durable than its detractors would hope, yet more fragile and endangered than its defenders claim.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
The Iranian regime has sought to recast conventional principles of human rights and political participation by forging alliances with like-minded regimes and by broadcasting its narrative to an international audience.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth sustains the antidemocratic policies that a nervous royal regime uses to defend against the threats and problems that confront it.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democracy in the Arab world seems farther away today than at any point in the last 25 years. If it is to ever arrive, it will likely be through a more evolutionary and elite-driven process.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
A review of Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East by Shadi Hamid.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
How do democracies emerge from monarchies? In an essay that eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz was working on when he passed away in October 2013, he and his coauthors draw lessons from the European experience about whether and how Arab monarchies might aid or resist democratic development.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
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 vulnerable?
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
The July 2013 military takeover has squashed democratic hopes in Egypt, at least for now. How did things go so wrong, and what lessons are to be drawn from this lamentable episode? Listen to the podcast with Author Nathan Brown [mp3]
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
The Assad regime has been adapting to the new challenges posed by mass uprisings through a process of “authoritarian learning,” and at least some of its methods are being applied elsewhere in the region. Watch an interview with the author.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
A long-ruling strongman president has been unseated by popular unrest and a negotiated transition is under way, but to many Yemenis this all appears to be a change more of appearance than of substance.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Qadhafi is gone after subjecting his country to a brutal dictatorship for more than four decades, but the devastated institutional landscape that he left behind bodes ill for Libya’s democratic prospects.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
The Arab world’s old autocracies survived by manipulating the sharp identity conflicts in their societies. The division and distrust that this style of rule generated is now making it especially difficult to carry out the kind of pact-making often crucial to successful democratic transitions.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
Not only did the Algerian regime survive the “Arab Spring,” it hardly deviated from its normal methods of authoritarian governance—patronage, pseudodemocratization, and effective use of the security apparatus.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
When this small island kingdom in the Gulf joined the wider Arab world’s political upheavals in March 2011, it was a reaction to regional events, but also a reflection of internal problems that had been festering for a decade.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
The Hashemite monarchy still fails to understand the challenges that threaten Jordan’s political order. The old playbook of limited, manipulated reform is no longer enough, but key players fail to realize it.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Although Olivier Roy and others argue that current circumstances will push ascendant Islamist parties in a democratic direction, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood remains committed to the revolutionary goals that have animated it since its beginnings.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
The Muslim Brotherhood is no longer a revolutionary movement, but rather a conservative one.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Egypt’s liberals, though they do not dominate political life and perhapsnever will, remain a crucial force in shaping the country’s politics.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
The “Arab Spring” has been very hard on autocratic presidents but so far has left the Arab world’s monarchies intact. How and why have Arab royals been able to resist the tide of protest?
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
The second wave of the Arab Barometer reveals strong and steady support for democracy in the Arab World but a deficit in democratic culture.
July 2012, Volume 23, Issue 3
The electoral triumph of Islamist parties has dampened the enthusiasm of democrats for the “Arab Spring.”
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
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 a new set of expressions that are modern and represent popular aspirations.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Of all the “Arab Spring” countries, so far only Tunisia has managed to make a transition to democracy. Tunisians now have a chance to show the world a new example of how religion, society, and the state can relate to one another under democratic conditions.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Morocco was not immune to the 2011 upheavals in the Arab world, but the country’s monarchy deftly managed the crisis through cosmetic constitutional reform.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
The AKP’s 2011 election victory confirmed its status as the dominant force in Turkish politics, but also sparked fears that its unchecked power might threaten civil liberties. Now it must face the challenges of adopting a new constitution and dealing with the Kurdish question.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Read the full essay here. Recent years have seen a transformation in Turkish civil-military relations—away from the traditional picture of weak elected officials overseen by a strong military, to one of a strengthened civilian government and a military with decreased influence. This article explores the questions of how this transformation has occurred, whether it will…
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Read the full essay here. In the West, Turkey is considered a model for a secular democracy in the Muslim world, yet the country finds itself mired in a crisis of civil rights and liberties under a third term of the pro-Islamic AKP government. Ironically, while the government maintains a discourse on political reform—including constitutional…
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Read the full essay here. Turkish state policy toward the Kurds, the Republic of Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, has evolved from denial and mandatory assimilation to cultural recognition to acknowledgment of the Kurds’ contested status as a political problem demanding political solutions. The election of 36 Kurdish-nationalist lawmakers, most of whom now sit in parliament…
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Contrary to popular wisdom, emerging democracies might be better off with a majoritarian electoral system rather than one based on proportional representation.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Evidence from waves of democratization shows proportional election systems, however imperfect, to be the better option in most contexts.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Although the Arab revolts have a long way to go before they can be counted as gains for democracy, they do underline what is perhaps democracy’s greatest source of strength worldwide—its superior legitimacy.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
The Arab events of 2011 may have some similarities to the wave of popular upheavals against authoritarianism that swept the Soviet bloc starting in 1989, but the differences are much more fundamental.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Across the Arab world, militaries have played a key role in determining whether revolts against dictatorship succeed or fail. What factors determine how and why “the guys with guns” line up the way they do?
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Methods of electing legislatures are fraught with consequences for the shape and quality of democracy, and must balance a number of competing goals. Amid the current political ferment of the Arab world, what kinds of electoral systems are emerging and what will they mean for democratic hopes there?
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Saudi Arabia looked for a time in early 2011 as if it too would become swept up in the Arab uprising. Yet it never quite happened—why?
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Long an “ultrarealist” power, Turkey has over the last decade begun taking human rights and democracy more seriously as aspects of its diplomacy, albeit still in a decidedly selective way.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
The wave of unrest that swept through the Arab world at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 originated in Tunisia. What happened— and what are the prospects that Tunisia will make a successful transition to democracy?
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Egyptians threw off the thirty-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, but now find themselves under essentially the same military tutelage that they had hoped to escape.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Widely reported as “Facebook revolutions,” the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt show that social media not only can ignite protests but also can help to determine their political consequences.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
In late 2010, not long before seismic political change was to erupt across the Middle East, Jordan held parliamentary elections. Officials were eager to present these as a fresh start, but a closer look tells a different tale.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
A powerful “salafist” public norm has taken root in the Arab world, becoming the main symbol of resistance to Westernization. At the same time, however, new cultural forces in the private domain are promoting a dynamic of secularization.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
In most Arab countries, Islamist groups are the only ones with the popular support needed to win free and fair elections. Yet Islamist parties have shown an ambivalence about and in some cases even an aversion to seeking power via the ballot box.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Yemen today finds itself gripped by a set of crises that threatens its very unity as a country. Only a turn toward democratic dialogue offers a way out.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Arabs express a clear preference for democracy, which they define in ways similar to citizens elsewhere in the world. But their authoritarian regimes are not listening.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
The 2009 vote for the presidency and local councils was marred by fraud, provoking a political crisis and casting a deep shadow over upcoming parliamentary elections. The Afghan experience calls into question whether voting should occur before other essential reforms are in place.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Although many Iraqi parties continue to be organized along religious or ethnic lines, both the tone and the results of the 2010 parliamentary election campaign show that most Iraqi voters prefer a broader national agenda over narrow sectarian appeals.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
After almost ten years of complex and costly efforts to build democracy in these two countries, where do things stand? What lay behind the critical choices that shaped events in these places, and what are their current prospects for success?
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
A new look at the World Values Survey data reveals how the Muslim world’s religious context affects individual Muslims’ attitudes toward democracy.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Those who warn against efforts to promote free elections in Muslim-majority countries often point to the threat posed by Islamic parties that stand ready to use democracy against itself. But what does the record really show regarding the ability of Islamic parties to win over Muslim voters?
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Democracy has held its own or gained ground in just about every part of the world except for the Arab Middle East. Why has this crucial region remained such infertile soil for democracy?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Iran’s massive protest movement against June’s electoral coup is now moving into a new phase. What are its prospects?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
The Islamic Republic is struggling, with the Revolutionary Guard Corps more and more the only thing propping it up.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
When students and other rights activists decided to seize a tactical opening that the regime cynically offered them during the 2009 campaign, they were making a choice that was even more fateful than they knew.
