The Upcoming Elections in Israel

by Yoav Peled | published December 4, 2002

On November 19, 2002, Amram Mitzna, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general who now serves as mayor of Haifa, soundly defeated another retired general, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the incumbent Labor party leader and former Defense Minister, in the Labor party primaries. Mitzna will face yet another general, his old nemesis Ariel Sharon, when Israel holds general elections for the Knesset on January 28, 2003.

Elections in Pakistan

Turning Tragedy Into Farce

by Shahnaz Rouse | published October 18, 2002

On the Eve of Iran's Presidential Elections

Report from Tehran

by Naghmeh Sohrabi , Arang Keshavarzian | published June 7, 2001

Khatami and His "Reformist" Economic (Non-)Agenda

by Sohrab Behdad | published May 21, 2001

Assessing the Iraqi Opposition

by Faleh A. Jabar | published March 23, 2001

Israel Elects Sharon

Contradictions of a Creeping Apartheid

by Oren Yiftachel | published February 12, 2001

Iran's Conservatives Face the Electorate

by Arang Keshavarzian | published February 1, 2001

In May, Iranians will go to the polls to pass judgment on the record of President Mohammad Khatami and the reform movement he symbolizes. Although observers of Iran typically characterize the Islamic Republic's factional divisions as a single left-right split dividing the regime into unified "reformist" and "conservative" blocs, a multitude of potential cleavages belie this simple dichotomy. Since the 1979 revolution, a variety of opinions have existed within the regime's accepted confines.

Beyond the Bibi Bill

Israel's Electoral System and the Intifada

by Jeff Halper | published December 19, 2000

December 18 the Knesset partially amended Israel's electoral law—the so-called "Bibi bill"—allowing Binyamin Netanyahu to run against Ehud Barak for prime minister. The law had stipulated that when a government resigns, as Barak's did December 9, elections are held for the prime ministership only, and that only Knesset members may present their candidacy. By the amendment, Netanyahu, who resigned from the Knesset after his 1999 defeat, could have run.

Cracks in Egypt's Electoral Engineering

The 2000 Vote

by Vickie Langohr | published November 7, 2000

Falluja's Feelings of Exclusion

by Quil Lawrence
published in MER238

Standing in line outside a Falluja polling station on December 15, 2005, a man named Qays spoke the words that the White House had been waiting to hear since the preceding January 30. “We Sunnis made a mistake in the last elections, and the people are suffering for that mistake. Even the armed groups know that.” The mass abstention of Sunni Arabs from the January 30 elections, some heeding the calls of communal leaders for a boycott and others fearing the death threats of insurgents, left them under-represented in the transitional national assembly and, ultimately, marginal to the process of drafting the new Iraqi constitution that passed a national referendum on October 15. “Bringing the Sunnis back in” was the foremost goal of US diplomacy in Iraq in 2005.