Category: Middle East/North Africa

IRGC takeover? Iran protests may change leadership, but not regime

     

Iran’s Supreme Leader demanded the judiciary punish those “who disrupt economic security” on Wednesday, following protests over the rial’s collapse and a tightening of U.S. sanctions pressure that has set… Read more »

Turkey’s election: cause for concern to every liberal democracy

     

With his victory in Sunday’s elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his place among the world’s emerging class of strongman rulers, nailing down the sweeping powers he has insisted he… Read more »

Democracy dividend vs. autocratic model in crisis

     

Democracy is under siege. But the evidence that democracy is good for growth doesn’t directly speak to whether democracy is easy to make work. Nor does it imply or maintain… Read more »

Iraqi militias, US ‘make nice’ following elections?

     

Many Shiite armed factions in Iraq haven’t been threatening the United States of late, especially since they fared so well in the May 12 elections, receiving the second-most number of… Read more »

Turkey’s historic election: last off-ramp before dictatorship?

     

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is campaigning for re-election, seized on the latest Turkish growth figures as a vindication of his economic policies in the face of skepticism from not… Read more »

Civil society fears Egypt’s crackdown signals start of a trend

     

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Democracy Index classifies four of the countries at this year’s World Cup as “authoritarian” – Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Egypt. The results at the World Cup for these… Read more »

Why leftist-Islamist alliance won Iraq’s elections

     

  Failure to predict the emergence of the leftist-Islamist alliance that won Iraq’s May elections resulted from a focus on elite politics and sectarian dynamics that obscured these underlying cross-ideological… Read more »