Middle Eastern autocracies rely ever more on repression of both their Islamist and secular critics, and therefore increasingly fear that any opening will be uncontrollable. Is there a way out?
By mid-2003, Afghanistan appeared in danger of reverting to “failed-state” status. Happily, the resilience of the Afghans plus some policy changes by the United States and its parners have put…
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.