Current Analysis

The Collapse of Tunisia’s Party System and the Rise of Kais Saied

Ten years after the Tunisian people overthrew the country's authoritarian ruler, their democracy is in crisis. On July 25, 2021, Tunisian President Kais Saied invoked Article 80, the emergency clause in the constitution, to sack the prime minister and freeze the activities of parliament. Nate Grubma

Nate Grubman, Aytuğ Şaşmaz • 13 min read

MER Article

The Kurdish Movement’s Disparate Goals and the Collapse of the Peace Process with Turkey

The Kurdish movement in Turkey has three stated objectives: to achieve a resolution of the Kurdish issue, to democratize Turkey and to establish a decentralized political system formulated as Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[1] Although the PKK is at the

Guney Yildiz • 15 min read

Current Analysis

Jordan Drops the Pretense of Democratic Reform

Despite promises otherwise, in the past four years, King ‘Abdallah has peeled the veneer of parliamentary governance off an increasingly autocratic system.

Jillian Schwedler • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Stay Off the Street

In a recent Slate article, Anne Applebaum makes the case [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/05/egypt_could_learn_from_india_dictatorships_could_learn_from_the_south_s.html] that Egypt’s presumptive president-to-be ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi should look to India, Brazil or S

Jillian Schwedler • 5 min read

Current Analysis

Fighting Mush

Among the Washington outfits that arose in the Bush years to rearm liberals in foreign policy debates is the Truman National Security Project, founded in 2005. Like its cohorts the Center for a New American Security and the National Security Network, the Truman initiative seeks to redefine the “progressive” foreign

Chris Toensing • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Weighing Morocco's New Constitution

2011 has been a year of unprecedented political tumult in Morocco. As neighboring North African regimes collapsed under the weight of popular pressure, demonstrators have convened in Moroccan cities as well, naming their uprising after the day of their largest initial gathering, February 20, and cal

Paul Silverstein • 18 min read

MER Article

From People to Citizens in Tunisia

While Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation will undoubtedly remain the iconic image of the 2011 Tunisian revolution, another set of pictures has also stuck in the minds of Tunisians. On the evening of January 14, despite an army curfew, a man staggered across Avenue Habib Bourguiba, shouting, “Ben Ali

Nadia Marzouki • 9 min read

Current Analysis

The Liquidation of Egypt's Illiberal Experiment

The Egyptian parliamentary elections that ended on December 5 defied expectations, not because the ruling National Democratic Party again dominates Parliament but because of the lengths to which it proved willing to go to engineer its monopoly. Official and unofficial ruling-party candidates garnere

Mona El-Ghobashy • 14 min read

MER Article

It's Never Time

“It is our great and historic responsibility,” intoned Egyptian President Husni Mubarak on December 26, 2006, “to achieve the essential goal of developing our democracy and political life, while avoiding drifting into uncalculated steps that could threaten the stability of our country and the succes

Bassam Haddad • 3 min read

MER Article

From the Editor (Spring 2008)

From December 2006 through the late summer of 2007, four foreign policy commentators reached for the same 1980s movie title, Back to the Future, to describe the peregrinations of US Middle East policy in the oft-proclaimed twilight of the neo-conservative moment. There was confusion, however, as to

The Editors • 6 min read

Current Analysis

Kuwait’s Annus Mirabilis

Kuwait has had an exceptional year, and it isn’t over yet—though one might not know from reading even the alternative press in the West. Fast on the heels of two remarkable developments in the slow democratization of the emirate, a convulsion gripped another part of the Middle East,

Mary Ann Tétreault • 22 min read

MER Article

Women in the Shadows of Democracy

“Life would get better.” Women throughout Iraq told themselves that constantly during the first, cautiously hopeful months of the US-British occupation of their country. As the electricity blinked on and off, the water stopped running and desert-camouflaged tanks churned up the narrow streets of th

Huda Ahmed • 7 min read