Political Islam and Democracy Crisis in North Africa

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Ramzy Baroud When the news circulated that Morocco’s leading political group, the Development and Justice Party (PJD), has been trounced in the latest elections, held in September, official…

Read More

Reflections on the State of Democracy in Iran after the 2021 Elections: An Elegy for the Voting Non-Voter

Monday, August 2, 2021

Shervin Malekzadeh SpongeBob SquarePants showed up on the boulevard halfway to midnight, almost two hours after state officials confirmed Hassan Rouhani as the seventh President of the Islamic Republic…

Read More

Iran Clears Way for Hard-line Judiciary Chief to Become President

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Farnaz Fassihi Candidates in Iran’s presidential elections have always been strictly vetted, and those deemed insufficiently loyal to the Islamic Revolution were disqualified. Within those limits, contenders held…

Read More

Iran’s Presidential Election: Electioneering without candidates

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Yassamine Mather Iran’s presidential elections will be held on June 18 and so far it is not clear who will be the candidates proposed by the many Islamic…

Read More

Turkey at the Crossroad

Monday, April 5, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

Read More

Turkey at the Crossroads?

Friday, February 26, 2021

Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…

Read More

Arab Spring: The End of Political Islam as We Know It

Monday, February 15, 2021

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Following a recent string…

Read More

The Hirak: Algerian Uprisings of 2019 – Essential reading

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Muriam Haleh Davis, Thomas Serres, and the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) This collection of texts in English, Arabic and French is a first attempt to gather…

Read More

What’s Really Driving the Azerbaijan-Armenia Conflict

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Djene Rhys, BajalanSara Nur Yildiz, Vazken Khatchig Davidian The outbreak of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has thrust the long-running dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh, known to Armenians…

Read More

Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

Monday, September 21, 2020

Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman, Geoff Mulgan​ This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place…

Read More

Israel’s elections: Decline of secular Zionism

Friday, March 13, 2020

Tony Greenstein Israel’s third general election in a year has shown a decisive shift to the Zionist right, but whether it will be sufficient to enable Binyamin Netanyahu…

Read More

Democratic revolution in Lebanon and Iraq

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Phil Hearse The Arab Spring of 2011-13 was drowned in rivers of blood, sometimes after being first diverted by the dead-end of political Islam. But in the last…

Read More

Understanding Socialism by Richard Wolff: Book Review

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Michael Roberts The New York Times magazine has described Richard Wolff as “probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist”.  And that is probably not an exaggeration as a description of this emeritus Professor of…

Read More

Iran Nationwide Popular Protests Call for Overthrow of Demagogic Regime

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Frieda Afari Police stations, banks, some public buildings,  a few religious seminaries and  many posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been set on fire.  Demonstrators have…

Read More

“Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava”

Sunday, November 17, 2019

An interview with Rosa Burç and Kerem Schamberger The death of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi isn’t the end of the Syrian bloodbath — even in…

Read More

Turkey: Autopsy of Erdoǧan’s Istanbul Defeat

Friday, November 8, 2019

Certainties that had defined Turkish politics for a generation were thrown into doubt by the overwhelming victory Istanbul voters handed the opposition CHP party’s mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoǧlu…

Read More

Protesters In Lebanon Refuse to Compromise, Call Nationwide General Strike

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Madleine Freeman On the fifth day of a series of massive protests in Lebanon, workers from the country’s largest unions have joined over a million protesters in the…

Read More

Will Massive Lebanese Demos end the Country’s Era of Corruption?

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Amira Abo el-Fetouh We may be too optimistic to hope that the massive demonstrations that have spread in all the cities of Lebanon will lead to the collapse…

Read More

Israel’s elections: The three political dimensions

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Moshé Machover I would like to deal with two aspects of Israeli politics: the attitude to Iran and the internal situation. Common to both parts is the intertwining…

Read More

Syria: “More Tribal, More Sectarian, More Crony Capitalist Than Ever” An Interview with Joseph Daher

Monday, August 26, 2019

Bashar al-Assad has started confiscating the homes of Syrians who fled during the Civil War. For decades, his clan has purged the state of all but the most…

Read More

The difficult relationship between the Kemalist CHP and the Kurdish HDP

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Gülistan Gürbey. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) was able to win the mayoral election in Istanbul (31 March and 23 June 2019) and at the same time experienced…

Read More

Are human rights history?

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman Not so long ago, human rights were seen as a way out of the crises of a divided world. From the late 1970s, almost all political…

Read More

Syria: Donor Conditionality, Sanctions, and the Question of Justice

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Omar Dahi. The question of donor conditionality and how it could be used to influence behavior and promote respect for human rights and political inclusion has increasingly gained…

Read More

Indian elections: it wasn’t the economy, stupid!

Monday, June 3, 2019

L K Sharma. The people accepted electoral authoritarianism for their security. This neutralised warnings by intellectuals and opposition parties that Modi’s India was heading towards fascism. Narendra Modi’s…

Read More

Eyewitness Report: Venezuela Up Close

Monday, May 20, 2019

Pat Fry. It was 7 AM April 30th in Caracas when I awoke to hear gun shots outside my hotel. Our group, seven US citizens and one Canadian,…

Read More

Istanbul Elections: a Turkish Constitutional Crisis?

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Richard Falk. Prefatory Note: There are important recent developments in Turkey. An unprecedented decision by the High Electoral Council (HEC) of Turkey to cancel the outcome of the…

Read More

Populism, annexationism, messianism: increasing influence of religious zealots

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Moshé Machover. Binyamin (‘Bibi’) Netanyahu’s motive for calling an early election to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), one year before the end of its term, was purely personal: it…

Read More

The UAE’s Crusade against Regional Democracy

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey Civil societies and political actors in the Middle East and North Africa have continuously fought for democratic change and positive reforms since the 2011 Arab Spring…

Read More

Trump’s America, Netanyahu’s Israel

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Adam Shatz. Israel’s legislative elections on 9 April were a tribute to Binyamin Netanyahu’s transformation of the political landscape.​ At no point were they discussed in terms of…

Read More

Noam Chomsky: Confronting Ultranationalist, Reactionary Movements Across the Globe

Sunday, April 14, 2019

On Thursday night, hundreds of people packed into the Old South Church in Boston to hear the world-renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky speak. He looked back at…

Read More