Category: Arab Spring

What the beginning of the end of democracy looks like

     

The United States has been the modern world’s most influential country and has promoted democracy passively by serving as a model and actively through its diplomatic efforts, aid, and even military and covert action… Read more »

Egypt’s social activism – ‘resilient and evolving’

     

Democracy and human rights advocates expressed disappointment by the warm embrace offered to Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Washington this week, despite his crackdown on civil society, but many were… Read more »

Egypt’s swing between extremism and autocracy

     

The view that Egypt’s President and former army chief Abdel Fattah al Sisi is in control is not borne out by the pile-up of policy debris, says analyst David Gardner…. Read more »

Populist infection need not mean democratic deconsolidation

     

  Whether recent signs of democratic de-consolidation are a predictor of a possible non-democratic backlash, is far from being ascertained, according to Daniele Archibugi, professor of innovation, governance and public… Read more »

Beyond Daesh: Crisis of Governance and Imperative of Reform

     

  Some 89% of respondents to the annual Arab Opinion Index (AOI) survey expressed negative and very negative views about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or… Read more »

How Egypt’s activists became ‘Generation Jail’

     

Six years after the Arab Spring, Egypt’s democracy activists live under constant threat of prison — or worse, notes analyst Joshua Hammer. It was just six years ago that Ahmed… Read more »

How to preserve Tunisia’s fragile democracy

     

Tunisia’s top diplomat wants the U.S. to “reach out more” to the tiny North African nation for collaboration against the evolving threat posed by the Islamic State — and to… Read more »

Politics, not theology, at the root of Islamist ideology

     

New national security adviser H.R. McMaster is setting a strikingly different tone to discussions on countering violent extremism by saying the term “radical Islamic terrorism” isn’t helpful for US goals, CNN… Read more »

How not to fuel extremism

     

Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have warned that labeling the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization “may fuel extremism” and damage relations with America’s allies, according to a summary… Read more »

Arab Fractures: Citizens, States, and Social Contracts

     

Long-standing pillars of the Arab order—authoritarian bargains and hydrocarbon rents—are collapsing as political institutions struggle with the rising demands of growing populations, says a new report from the Carnegie Endowment…. Read more »