July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Cancel Toqueville?
Does the author of the nineteenth-century classic, Democracy in America, still matter?
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?
A decade ago, Arab peoples stood up and sought to replace their rulers with a more democratic political project. But Arab autocrats have a project of their own. Can the people gain ground in the struggle for self-government, or will their rulers bear it away?
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The Prince
A review of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman, by Ben Hubbard.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
Review Essay: Why Tunisia?
A review of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly by Safwan M. Masri.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Has the Door Closed on Arab Democracy?
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democracy in the Arab world seems farther away today than at any point in the last 25 years. If it is to ever arrive, it will likely be through a more evolutionary and elite-driven process.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The Ups and Downs of Islamism
A review of Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East by Shadi Hamid.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Tracking the “Arab Spring”: Why the Modest Harvest?
Popular uprisings have occurred only in some Arab states and in even fewer have authoritarian rulers been overthrown. What factors allow us to predict whether an authoritarian regime will be vulnerable?
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Road to (and from) Liberation Square
Egyptians threw off the thirty-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, but now find themselves under essentially the same military tutelage that they had hoped to escape.
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.”
Defending Democracy in an Age of Sharp Power
Explores how authoritarian regimes are deploying “sharp power” to undermine democracies from within by weaponizing universities, institutions, media, technology, and entertainment industries.
Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World
The uprisings that swept the Arab world beginning in 2010 toppled four entrenched rulers and seemed to create a political opening in a region long impervious to democratization.