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?
Strategies based on transition pacts that reduce rulers' risks and cushion their retreat from total power may be the most promising route to democracy in the Arab world.
Latin America’s recent experience shows that effective democratic governance is difficult to achieve and depends on many factors, some of them context-specific. Nonetheless, it is possible to draw some general…