While despotic Arab regimes may seem stable, change is brewing beneath the surface. A new era is emerging in which the state will be forced to retreat before a vibrant civil society.
About the Author
Laith Kubba, a native of Baghdad, is senior director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Endowment for Democracy. From May 2005 to March 2006, he was chief press spokesperson for Iraq’s Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaffari.
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.
The uneasy accommodation of competing visions of authority that has characterized Iran’s political system since 1979 is a familiar phenomenon in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Mass uprisings toppled dictators in both Sudan and Algeria in 2019, but only Sudan was able to secure a transition to democracy due to important differences in their protest movements,…
