Region: Middle East and North Africa

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Are They Democrats? Does It Matter?

The journalistic and policy communities have been alive with speculation as to whether Islamist groups involved in politics—including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine’s Hamas— are true believers in democracy or calculating pragmatists who, in Steven Cook’s words, are “seeking to use democratic procedures in order to advance an antidemocratic agenda.”

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Turkey’s AKP in Power

The rise of Islamist parties poses new challenges to efforts to understand the relationship between Islam and democracy. A diverse group of authors investigates this new phenomenon and its implications for the future of democracy in the Middle East.

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Participation Without Power

Read the full essay here. The debate on the compatibility of Islamism and democracy has tended to focus on two main scenarios. In the first, Islamist political parties become agents for democratization through their participation in freely held elections. In the second, Islamists use the democratic process to gain control and establish an antidemocratic regime—the…

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Institutions Make the Difference

Read the full essay here. Political Islam is often cited as the key challenge to democratization in Muslim nations, but deep currents of authoritarianism may prove more of an obstacle. Traditions of monarchy, military rule, and weak civic institutions block the path of democratic transition throughout the Muslim world. Political Islam does of course present…

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Why They Can’t be Democratic

Read the full essay here. This article makes a case of the basic distinction between Islam and Islamism and presents three central arguments: 1. through religious reforms and a rethinking of the Islamic doctrine, the cultural system of Islam can be put in harmony with democracy, 2. this (first) argument does not apply to Islamism…

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: A Boon or a Bane for Democracy?

Read the full essay here. What role do mainstream Islamist movements play in Arab politics? With their popular messages and broad social base, would their incorporation as normal political actors be the best hope for democratization or democracy’s bane? For too long, we have tried to answer such questions solely by speculating about the true…

January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1

Taming Extremist Parties: Lessons from Europe

The history of twentieth-century European communist parties shows that extremists can be moderated by robust democratic institutions. Without them, however, the inclusion of extremist parties may undermine democracy.

January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1

Morocco’s Elections: A Dynamic Civil Society

Since the 1990s, Moroccan civil society groups have been proliferating, and they are increasingly influential in addressing society-wide matters including the rights of women, ethnic minorities, and the poor.

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January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1

Turkey Divided

Events surrounding Turkey's 2007 elections reveal a country with a vibrantly democratic political sphere and a society badly split over the role of Islam in national life.

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April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2

Toward Muslim Democracies

About two-thirds of the world's Muslims live under governments chosen through competitive elections. The remaining third lives mostly in the Arab world, a region that poses the hardest challenges for democratization.

October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4

Exchange: Arab Political Pacts: An Unlikely Scenario

Middle Eastern realities and scholarship on democratic transitions both suggest that formally negotiated deals between authoritarian rulers and liberal opposition forces are unlikely to provide the path to change in the Arab world.

October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4

Exchange: Mistaking Data for “Theory”

We should neither be too hasty to discount the prodemocratic political ferment in the Arab world, nor be fooled into thinking that Islamist groups will play a constructive part in democratic transitions.

July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3

The Palestinian Elections: Beyond Hamas and Fatah

January’s remarkably free and fair parliamentary elections broke the PLO’s longstanding monopoly over Palestinian politics. Given Fatah’s disarray and the difficulties facing Hamas, there is now a window of opportunity for a third and avowedly liberal-democratic option to emerge.

January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1

Getting to Arab Democracy: Dealing with Communalism

Whether ethnic, sectarian, or some combination of the two, communalsim is one of the massive realities of Middle Eastern life and politics. It is usually seen as an obstacle to democracy, but need that always be the case?

January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1

Islam and Liberty

A review of The Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations Is Not Inevitable. By Michael Novak.

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

The New Iraq: The Sistani Factor

For the Shi'ite majority and its senior religious leader, the January elections played out against the background of a longing for justice that has deep spiritual sources as well as more recent sociopolitical roots.

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

The New Iraq: The Uses of Historical Memory

If Iraq is to become the free and self-governing country that an overwhelming majority of its citizens want it to be, a "useable past" made accessible by historical memory will be vital.

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

Turkey’s AKP: A Model “Muslim-Democratic” Party?

Is the Islamic-oriented party that has ruled since 2002 really the harbinger of 'Muslim democracy,' or is it something more familiar in Turkish politics: a hierarchical group none too closely in touch with society and overly focused on one man?

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

Gauging Arab Support for Democracy

Despite some moves toward liberalization in the past three decades, all Arab-majority countries remain authoritarian. Nonetheless, opinion surveys show that popular support for democracy in this part of the world is high.

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April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2

The Rise of “Muslim Democracy”

The incentives created by competitive elections in a number of Muslim-majority countries are fueling a political trend that roughly resembles the rise of Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe

October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4

Debate: The Persistence of Arab Authoritarianism

The lack of democracy in the Arab world is a problem that goes far beyond the absence of competitive elections. This lack must be traced not to religion or culture, but to adverse historical and geostrategic circumstances.

October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4

Debate: The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism

The notion that the Muslim world as a whole does not suffer from a deficit in terms of competitive democracy is apealing, but rests on evidence and assumptions that cannot withstand critical scrutiny.

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January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1

Iraq: Setbacks, Advances, Prospects

The stakes are enormous and the challenges are difficult, but a look at Iraq months after the toppling of Saddam Hussein reveals that, despite all the frustrating setbacks, grounds for cautious optimism remain.

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October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4

Reviving Middle Eastern Liberalism

For about a century after 1850, the Middle East enjoyed an imperfect yet real "Liberal Age." The roots of some of the key institutions of that era remain today. Can they be nurtured into a second spring?

October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4

The Crisis of Indian Secularism

The principled separation of religious from political claims upon which Indian democracy depends may not be dead, but it is ailing badly. How did things reach this pass, and what is the prognosis for recovery?

October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4

Pakistan’s “Armored” Democracy

Four years after his bloodless coup, Pervez Musharraf is executing a military “exit strategy” from politics that involves lots in the way of problematic strategy and little in the way of real exit from political power.

July 2003, Volume 14, Issue 3

A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq

If Iraq is successfully to democratize and an inclusive democratic culture is to emerge, the Iraqi state must be reconstituted as a federal and strongly liberal system and thoroughly demilitarized.

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April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2

Terror, Islam, and Democracy

Although Islamist terror groups invoke a host of religious references, the real source of their ideas is not the Koran but rather Leninism, fascism, and other strains of twentieth-century thought that exalt totalitarian violence.

October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4

Why Direct Election Failed in Israel

Israel began directly electing its prime minister in 1992, only to abandon this change less than ten years later. What came between was a series of hard lessons in the unintended consequences or reform.

January 2001, Volume 12, Issue 1

Pakistan’s Predicament

The military regime of General Musharraf has been less repressive than many had feared, but there is little sign that it is overcoming the deep-seated problems that led to the failure of Pakistani democracy.

October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4

A Reply to My Accusers

An Egyptian civil-society leader responds to the closing down of his organization and the allegations against him by state prosecutors.

July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3

The Kurdish Question in Turkey

One of the greatest obstacles to democratic consolidation in Turkey has been the country's treatment of its Kurdish citizens. The root of the problem lies in the very nature of the Turkish state, which confuses unity with uniformity.