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The readings noted below should thus be approached largely but not solely as selective entry points to the study of authoritarianism in the Middle East from the perspective of comparative politics and political economy

Jennifer Ghandi and Ellen Lust in their article, “Elections Under Authoritarianism," Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 12 (2015), 403-422

Hanna Batatu’s magisterial study of Iraq, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (now available in a paperback edition from Saqi Books, 2004), and Madawi al-Rashid’s A History of Saudi Arabia, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Arab State (University of California Press, 1990); Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse University Press, 2000); Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in The Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Lynne Rienner, 2005); and Oliver Schlumberger, ed. Debating Arab Authoritarianism (Stanford University Press, 2007)

Lisa Wedeen’s Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (University of Chicago, 2015), explores why people comply with, and even extend the appearance of legitimacy to, a regime that rests on demonstrably false claims

In Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Tarek Masoud helps us understand why Islamist parties take part in elections they know are neither free nor fair.

Asef Bayat’s Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, 2nd Edition (Stanford University Press, 2013) examine how consolidated and encompassing authoritarian systems of rule shape practices and modes of resistance, and generate politically potent forms of alienation among citizens.

a good overview of debates about whether the Middle East is exceptional in the resilience of its authoritarian regimes can be found in Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy Without Democrats?: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), and in an article by Larry Diamond that appeared just prior to the onset of the uprisings: “Why Are There No Arab Democracies?,” Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (January 2010), 93-112

Roger Owen’s The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), and Joseph Sassoon’s Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Abdullah Hammoudi’s Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (University of Chicago Press, 1997)

Two distinctive but related research programs of particular interest have developed since the 1990s and taken on new forms since the mass protests of 2011: one focusing on questions of authoritarian resilience and authoritarian modes of political and economic liberalization, another on the strategies that authoritarian regimes have embraced to respond to the changing configurations of challenges they have confronted with the rise of neoliberal globalization, technological change, new communications technologies, and the emergence of a post-democratization international order.

Two articles by Eva Bellin highlight conditions that contribute to the resilience of authoritarianism at a regional level, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (January 2004), 139-157, and a follow-up article Bellin published in the wake of the uprisings of 2011, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (January 2012), 127-149. Two further articles by Daniel Brumberg unpack the strategic logics that guide authoritarian regimes as they work to contain challenges to their long-term survival: “The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (October 2002), 56-68, and “Transforming the Arab World’s Protection-Racket Politics,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 3 (July 2013), 88-103. In addition, readers will benefit from Jason Brownlee’s Authoritarianism in an Age of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Nicola Pratt’s Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Lynn Rienner, 2006).

“Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World” (Brookings, 2007), describes the tactics authoritarian regimes across the region adopted to address the specific challenges they confronted in the 1990s and early 2000s; these tactics remain relevant in the post-uprising era

Transformations within authoritarianism, as opposed to transitions from authoritarianism to something else, will continue to be relevant across the region, save for the case of Tunisia, the only Arab country thus far to experience a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

Project on Middle East Political Science, The Arab Thermidor: The Resurgence of the Security State, POMEPS Special Studies 11 (February 2015)

If there is one overarching sensibility that distinguishes important contributions to research on authoritarianism in the Middle East, it is an appreciation for how fluid, malleable, and adaptive it has been and remains. The appearance of stability, even stagnation, in the decades prior to the 2011 uprisings often obscured an enormously varied and vibrant environment of contestation, resistance, competition and conflict both within and among regimes, and between regimes and the societies over which they govern. As the Middle East moves today through a post-uprising phase in which in which regimes are reconfiguring authoritarian practices in the context of highly mobilized societies, violent conflict that has caused massive levels of human displacement and suffering, climate change, the declining influence of the United States, the rise of Russia and Iran as important actors, and continued demands for neoliberal restructuring of political economies, there can be little question that the study of authoritarianism in the Middle East will continue to occupy the attention of students and scholars of the region.

a phenomenal and impressive movement in Algeria, nothing less than a revolution. And it is one which has taken over every city, every institution, every family and every individual man, woman and child across the country.

Bouteflika stood down in April 2019. Many high-ranking politicians have been tried on corruption charges and imprisoned. Businessmen connected to the elite have been tried. With each demonstration, the Hirak has won concessions from the regime – and they are not giving in until as the rallying cry calls for - Yetnahaw Gaa – all those associated with the regime Must Get Out.

The Hirak seems to have no leaders. It has developed slogans, songs, many taken from the football stadiums where an intelligent and astute political narrative has developed in recent years. It continues in multiple forms from cultural activities in main squares, dialogue and debates on the steps of the national theatre, to collective cleaning up of public spaces. The creative energy, ideas of the young people, women, students, workers – all sectors of society - is its lifeblood.

this week has seen a massive escalation of the protests in response to what is seen as now an illegitimate government trying to pass new bills in Algeria. Combined with cases of violence against students – the reasons for maintaining the protests are profound ones and Algerians will continue to demonstrate.

Most importantly, however, is the question of reconciliation between Algerians, with all sections of society marching and protesting together. These are the beautiful moments of the Hirak – when thousands of people have been vocally challenging detentions, using the “mahraz”, in solidarity with detainees. Or when the Algerian Youth Orchestra took over public space in Jijel and performed to local people. When in Blida, artists have claimed back the square through the cultural Hirak.

Can a proposed 12 December election take place if not all members of the Issaba – the bandits as the regime has been renamed – are gone?

Who can stand in these presidential elections, who is completely untied to a regime which infiltrated so much of Algerian life?

First, Algeria has a highly educated population – the number of universities and the number of students has increased dramatically in the last decades – and these are the heart of debates about reform and development of the country. Second, the Arab Spring in Algeria happened in 1988. Algeria’s democratisation process in 1990 – despite its tragic consequences of the cancelled elections in 1991 and the violence that ensued - left a Constitution which allowed associations and political parties to form. Despite the violence, Algerians have mobilised and organised in their thousands since 1990 in the most difficult of conditions.

one of the most powerful and promising revolutions in Africa.

Perhaps Barak's political career has simply been a reflection of the inevitable Israeli shift to the right given 40 years of occupation and the ongoing inability to create a liberal narrative for what the marriage of a Jewish and democratic state might look like. Many though would argue that Barak himself, more than Lieberman or Netanyahu or any other politician, has been the harbinger of the deeply illiberal winds blowing through Israeli politics today

The opposition has been strengthened, not only numerically but also by removing the fig leaf of national unity and centrist positioning that Netanyahu's government claimed by virtue of Labor being a partner. While it is true that Ehud Barak and the other four ex-Laborites are still there, the storyline in the media and in the political world will be unequivocal - that this was a cynical and self-indulgent move by Barak and friends, and that anything remaining of the social-democratic or center-left parliamentary camp in Israel now exclusively resides on the opposition benches. It will also now be easier for Livni to paint this government as a narrow rightist religious coalition (although to be fair, the government was doing a rather good job of that on its own).

Netanyahu will now be more dependent than ever on the Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu parties and their respective leaders, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The Labor Party split serves to clarify rather than change the existing political dynamic - one of absolute impasse on the Israeli-Palestinian front. There is no prospect of meaningful change being generated internally by the Israeli side. Netanyahu is now under even less and perhaps no pressure from his coalition to do anything on the peace front. The US has so far decided not to step into this vacuum with a clear effort of its own

The very phenomenon of military generals going straight into politics, the story of Ehud Barak, is a problematic one. The inability to sustain democratically functioning party political structures which citizens are intimately involved in would be devastating for Israel. Many of Israel's parties are religious or strongman fiefdoms, and the traditional parties of the center have either not yet established proper procedures (Kadima), seen those procedures eroded (Likud), or simply collapsed (Labor). Israel's parliamentary democracy cannot survive if representative party political structures fall by the wayside.

Faced with all of this, the US may throw up its hands. In fact, distancing itself from a discredited and demeaning peace process might well be one of the better options that the US has. Were the administration to tell the parties that it is ready to reengage only when they themselves demonstrate real seriousness and purpose or to be more honest and also more risky, to lay the dead cat at Netanyahu's door, then some US credibility might be restored the domestic debate inside Israel could be constructively shaken up.

In effect, Likudniks have been running all of Israel's four largest parties

For the time being, Israel's future will be decided according to how political and ideological arguments play out within the Likud revisionist camp. That is a reality that would have seemed inconceivable to Israel's founders, although they are perhaps partly to blame for never developing a sufficiently progressive and inclusive vision of Israeli democracy, ceding the ideological debate at key moments to a more narrow, nationalist agenda which eventually became the majority and is now utterly hegemonic.

if Israel is to be a functioning liberal democracy long into the future, one that is in any way recognizable to its supporters in the West (who are not religiously-oriented), then a new progressive camp will ultimately have to build itself. That camp will not emerge from the Knesset machinations of factions within factions of a party. It would have to be part of a longer process that thoroughly examines Labor's failings and that creates a new and progressive democratic story of Israel and Israel's future.

Despite the (now somewhat revised) calming assessments of Israel's outgoing Mossad chief regarding Iran's nuclear program, Netanyahu has also been upping the ante on that front, demanding that a credible military threat be on the table. Add to the mix the renewed tensions in Lebanon; the replacement of the current crop of somewhat cautious leadership figures in Israel's security establishment (the heads of the IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet have either just switched or are about to); Barak-Netanyahu's need to show leadership and purpose and their willingness to work with an equally willing Republican congressional leadership in cornering Obama -- a period of instability and brinkmanship replete with danger may well be on the horizon

Jabotinsky was a territorial maximalist in his time and committed to the role of force and power in achieving the goals of Jewish nationalism.  But he also was in many ways a pragmatic realist and actually a liberal when it came to equality for Arabs. Israel is facing a choice between a fascist mutation of Jabontinskyism and a liberal mutation of Jabotinskyism, and with Labor dead, it is a Likud family affair.

Mr. Motahari warned that Ayatollah Yazdi’s approach would ultimately mean soccer’s defeat of Islam. The ayatollah’s position, he said was comparable to “the activities of the Catholic Church in medieval times that resulted in the Europeans’ escape from religion.”

Deputy parliament speaker Ali Motahari, scion of another prominent Shiite scholar, ridiculed the ayatollah’s criticism, according to Al Monitor, in an open letter. “Imagine that Iran scored against South Korea and some people cheered. Does that mean that the people are cheering the martyrdom of Imam Hussein? If someone after years meets his mother, father or child on the eve of Ashura, should he then not be happy and smiling to avoid violating the sanctity of the imam?” Mr. Motahari asked.

Soccer’s popularity in Iran forced the mullahs shortly after their toppling of the shah in 1979 to drop their initial opposition to the game. The mullah’s hesitancy toward the sport was expressed in a pamphlet published a year after the revolution by the government’s propaganda arm that argued that money spent on soccer would be better invested in social and economic development. Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment has similarly struggled with soccer. The official fatwa website of the General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta (Fatwa) has endorsed the game but banned competitions – a ruling the Saudi government has consistently ignored.                 To Saudi Arabia’s Muslim scholars Iran’s Shiites are heretics. Iran denounces Saudi Arabia’s puritan Wahhabi interpretation of Islam as the inspiration of Sunni Muslim jihadism. There seems little that the two countries and their religious establishment can agree on, which makes the meeting of the minds on soccer all the more remarkable.

Shiites and their mosques are still regular targets of deadly attacks: Since 2003, an estimated 2,558 Shiites have been killed in sectarian violence.

While there was no sudden, overnight transformation, Ispahani nevertheless identifies Zia’s rule as the point of no return. The military ruler Islamized the laws of the country, introducing sharia courts and new Islamic laws known as hudood ordinances, which apply strict Sharia punishments for specific offenses. It was during his time that the blasphemy laws were strengthened, adding life sentences and the death penalty as punishment.

Zia’s legacy remains, entrenched in the system and people’s daily lives. Pakistanis under the age of 40 have never experienced any other lifestyle, while the older generations reminisce about a more diverse past — even as they also gloss over some of that past’s shortcomings. But however it came about, Pakistan’s growing intolerance has taken its toll on diversity: Between 1947 and today, minorities went from 25 percent of the population to 3 percent.

Ispahani’s book serves as a reminder that something far more profound than miniskirts has been lost in these countries. Washington’s counterterrorism policies, which help curb groups like the Taliban, are a good start, but they often fail to go any further toward restoring basic norms like respect for diversity. That will ultimately depend on the efforts of the local population themselves. Those efforts may be able to draw on the power of nostalgia. When people in Pakistan, Egypt, or Afghanistan rifle through the photo albums of their parents and grandparents and wonder what happened to their country, they see skirts or cleavage — but they desire diversity and freedom of choice

Anti-Black racism has only increased in Algeria with the arrival of tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Black, largely clandestine, migrants over the last two decades, who enter Algeria for educational or economic opportunities, or more often, to travel through the country en route to Europe.

20-25% of Algerians are native Amazigh speakers (Tamazight), and many more are Arabized Amazighs. The indigenous Amazighs have been struggling for equality since independence against a state determined to impose an Arab Muslim identity on the country’s entire population

When Algerians think of “racial” discrimination, it is likely that they first think of the treatment Algerian Arabs and Amazighs received at the hands of the French during the colonial period (1830-1962), and afterwards in France.27Kamel Daoud, “Black in Algeria? Then You’d Better be Muslim” The New York Times, May 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/opinion/kamel-daoud-black-in-algeria-then-youd-better-be-muslim.html . See also Seloua Luste Boulbina, “Si tu desires te Moquer du Noir: Habille-le en rouge”, Middle East Eye, 24 November 2018. https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinion-fr/si-tu-desires-te-moquer-du-noir-habille-le-en-rouge-0 The debate over Algeria as a post-colonial society has been fully engaged. However, in another sign of the invisibility of Algeria’s black citizens, consideration of Algeria as a post-slave society – and what that means for black Algerians today – has not

Black people, who were present in southern Algeria even before the 13- century-long  trans-Saharan slave trade, can be considered to be as indigenous to Algeria as the Amazigh population.

following a regional trend to repress diversity issues, the Algerian government has never taken a census to ascertain the total number of Algerian black citizens in the country, most of whom remain concentrated in the Saharan south. Ninety-one percent of the Algerian population lives along the Mediterranean coast on 12% of the country's total land mass.

Because most black Algerians are scattered in the vast southern Sahara, an area of the country about which many Algerians are not familiar, white Algerians may be only dimly aware, if aware at all, that they have black compatriots.25Ouzani, op.cit. Certainly, many black Algerians have reported that they face incredulity when claiming their national identity in northern Algeria at police roadblocks, airports, and even in doing everyday ordinary things like responding to a request for the time, “When I walk in the street and someone wants to ask me the time, he does it in French, convinced that he is dealing with a Nigerien or a Chadian, a way of indicating that an Algerian cannot be black.”

Amazigh activists have challenged the state’s assertion of Arab-Muslim homogeneity. Amazigh activism, in the form of mass protests and the undertakings of Amazigh-dominated political parties and civil society organizations, has pressured the state to constitutionally accept Amazigh identity as one of the components of Algerian identity, integrate the Amazigh language in secondary education, and recognize the Amazigh language as a national and later an official language of the state, in addition to Arabic

elites were also leaders of Third Worldism, and officially believed in pan-Africanism. Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first post-independence president, declared in Accra, Ghana, in 1963: “It was the imperialists who tried to distinguish between the so-called white and black Africans.”

in Saharan areas, the slave trade continued throughout the period of French settler colonialism (1830-1962)

Arab-Berber whites constructed an economy that relied on black slave labour from their Haratins (enslaved or recently freed Islamicized and Arabized Blacks, who are still susceptible to forced labour practices).31These ambiguously freed black slaves in Saharan areas of Algeria are also called Bella or Ikelan if they were enslaved by Amazighs, including Tuaregs. Today Haratins, mostly sharecroppers, work under harsh labour conditions that some have described as a modern form of slavery, they “dig and tend wells, excavate and maintain the underground channels of foggara, irrigate gardens, tend to flocks, and cultivate dates”.32Benjamine Claude Brower, “Rethinking Abolition in Algeria,” Cahier D’etudes Africaines 49, 2009 Some argue that without the labour of enslaved Black people, the Sahara would never have been habitable at all.33Ibid. The arduous and relentless work to irrigate in a desert includes digging channels tens of feet into the sand with the risk of being drowned under it.

The French accommodated slavery in the Algerian Sahara more than anywhere else. Slave masters and merchants were given permission to trade in slaves and keep those they owned well into the twentieth century.35Ibid. In exchange, slavers and merchants provided intelligence on far-off regions to colonial authorities

there is reason to believe that enslaved black people continue to be exploited for agricultural work in the southern oases of Ouargla and Ghardaia provinces to this day (among wealthy families, owners of large palm trees, fields, and farms) and in some instances among semi-nomadic Tuareg

The Algerian state has never adopted any policies, including any affirmative action policies, to help their black community emerge from the impact of generations of servitude and brutalization.40Brower, op.cit. Instead, it has sought to legitimize the country’s white Arab-Muslim identity only

descendants of freed Black slaves (Haratins) in Saharan regions of Algeria often remain dependent upon former “masters.” Most work as sharecroppers in conditions similar to slavery

Black Algerians also face discrimination in urban areas of the country. They encounter the same racist attitudes and racial insults as any other person with dark skin within Algerian borders.

Either by their colour, k’hal, which is twisted into kahlouche (blackie), mer ouba (charcoal), guerba kahla (a black gourd to hold water made out of goatskin), nigro batata (big nose that resembles a potato), haba zeitouna (black olive), babay (nigger), akli (Black slave in some Berber areas), rougi  (redhead or Swedish to imply that the black person is culturally and socially white, as everyone must want to be), saligani (from Senegal) 46Khiat, op.cit., Calling black Algerians Saligani (from Senegal) has a different history. It refers back to the early decades of the 20th century when the French utilized black West-African soldiers in their colonial army to do the dirty work of colonialization, including brutalizing members of the population that resisted French rule, taking food from farmers, and rape. or by direct references to past servile status: hartani (dark black slave or ex-slave forced to work outside the master’s house), khadim (servant), ouacif (domestic slave), ‘abd (slave), ‘abd m’cana (stinky black slave).47Ibid. Using these terms against a black Algerian passerby establishes difference, contempt, strangeness, rejection, distance, and exclusion

In addition to racial insults, a black Algerian academic has noted, “Our community continues to symbolize bad luck. Worse: in the stories of grandmothers, we play the bad roles, kidnappers of children, looters, or vagrants. [While Arabs and Berbers can both point to a proclaimed noble history in Algeria] there is no place for a black hero in the collective memory of my people.”

In addition to rejection of interracial marriages, an Algerian intellectual has reported cases of “white” Algerians refusing to room with Blacks or study with them at university

A step forward in reducing Negrophobia, the selection of Khadija Benhamou, a black woman from the Algerian Sahara, as Miss Algeria in 2019 has been marred by the subsequent deluge of posts on social media virulently claiming that she did not represent the beauty of the country, with many direct attacks against the colour of her skin.

Partly due to pressure on Algeria to control its borders from the European Union, Black sub-Saharan African migrants have been vilified by the Algerian government and some of the press;59https://insidearabia.com/algeria-desert-deportations-eu-migration/ accused – usually falsely – of violence, selling drugs, promiscuity, spreading venereal diseases, perpetuating anarchy, and raping Algerian women.

Without irony, some graffiti and social media posts called on the migrants to “Go back to Africa.”

Three generations after independence, the Algerian state is still resisting the open public debate and civil society engagement needed to reflect the country’s pluralism and to begin to reckon with slave legacies and racial discrimination

In the midst of this global energy crisis, African leaders have argued that their nations should also be allowed to ramp up fossil fuel use to improve domestic energy access—given they had contributed so little to historic carbon emissions. Indeed, 43 percent of Africa’s 1.4 billion people still lack access to electricity. As a result of soaring energy prices, the number of people without access to energy across Africa rose for the first time in decades, threatening to erode all gains made. According to the International Energy Agency, around 1 billion Africans will still rely on dirty fuels, such as firewood, for cooking in 2030. However, Western governments demanded that multilateral lenders, such as the World Bank, stop funding fossil fuel projects to reduce global carbon emissions.

Egypt, Africa’s second-largest economy, agreed on Oct. 27 to a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was the country’s fourth since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in a coup in 2013, making Egypt the IMF’s second-largest debtor after Argentina. Long a top choice for emerging market investors, Egypt had become heavily dependent on hot money, but investors panicking over the war in Ukraine pulled around $20 billion out of Egypt between February and March.

Inflation in Ghana rose to 15.7 percent in March as the Ghanaian currency lost 16 percent of its value against the dollar, prompting protests in June over the soaring cost of living.

Africa is seeking more than just climate reparations as it looks to transform the global system. African leaders want a permanent seat for the African Union at the G-20, two seats on the U.N. Security Council, and a reordering of global tax rules under the United Nations.

2022 was a year for the restitution of Africa’s historical artifacts stolen by colonial powers. The Smithsonian Institution agreed to return its collection of Benin Bronzes and placed legal ownership with Nigerian authorities. In July, Germany handed back two bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items into Nigeria’s ownership while a digital database—known as Digital Benin, which documents Western museums’ existing collection of Benin’s artifacts—was unveiled in November. Despite this progress, there are still unanswered calls for the British Museum, the largest holder of Benin Bronzes, to return its loot. In September, the world marked the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of written decrees issued by Egyptian priests during the reign of Ptolemy V (204 to 180 B.C.). Egyptian scholars and archaeologists renewed their demand for the stone’s return, which has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802. Their call has garnered more than 135,000 signatures on an online petition.

An online archive to showcase Mali’s cultural history was launched in March, digitizing more than 40,000 of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century and originally written in medieval Arabic but translated to several languages in an online platform. Malian librarians and their assistants secretly transported hundreds of thousands of documents into family homes in a bid to save them from destruction by jihadis. Through those efforts, some 350,000 manuscripts from 45 libraries across the city were kept safe.

The U.A.E. took the view that, at this extremely sensitive juncture in Bahrain's national dialogue, it would be unhelpful to allow nonconstructive views on the situation in Bahrain to be expressed from within another GCC state

an example of the unavoidable "tension between cash-strapped universities and Gulf governments" that have funds to spare but also expect that Western academics will defer to local sensitivities and restrictions.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the two richest and best known of the seven emirates that make up the U.A.E., are home to dozens of foreign branch campuses, including those of New York University and the Sorbonne.

The two emirates have invested heavily in making themselves international business and education hubs. But universities in the United Arab Emirates must obtain security clearances to hire professors and invite speakers, and public debates of any kind are tightly monitored. And ever since the Arab Spring, academics and human-rights groups have noted, the space for free public discourse has been shrinking.

Mr. Ulrichsen believes that an article he wrote last summer for the Web site OpenDemocracy, entitled "The U.A.E.: Holding Back the Tide," may have played a part in his blacklisting.

"The U.A.E. states that education is a priority for the country as it develops," said Matt J. Duffy, a former professor of journalism at the national Zayed University who was abruptly dismissed last summer. However, he said, incidents like this one and several others show that "security forces of the country often undermine this goal."

Foreign universities are guests in the United Arab Emirates and need to be "aware of the environment they're entering," said Warren Fox, executive director for higher education at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, a Dubai government agency that accredits and regulates foreign higher-education institutions. "If universities decided they could only go to countries with the same cultural and political values, they wouldn't go abroad at all," said Mr. Fox. "And I think they should, because of the benefits to students and to universities."

universities here must also obtain security clearances to hire academics, organize conferences, and invite speakers. In the wake of the Arab Spring, authorities have tightened restrictions on freedom of expression and arrested nearly a hundred human-rights activists and Islamists they accuse of plotting to overthrow the state

Dubai International Academic City, a "free zone" that is home to dozens of foreign universities

our subject is engineering. We don't teach politics

holding an election that is pronounced clean and successful may be of less value to the state than is now apparent. As the year progresses, the public is likely to evaluate the new parliament and government by their ability to address popular concerns

High turnout and good reviews of election day are the foundations of the state’s claim to have a new mandate. But election monitors in Jordan have made the same point time and time again: An election is much more than the casting of ballots, and a successful poll does not equate to the advent of democracy.

monitors were also unanimous in their assessment that the system underpinning the vote falls considerably short of ideal. Their criticism centers on the distorted representation inherent in the election law and the political culture that gerrymandering promotes. Jordan’s voting system boosts the fortunes of candidates whose support base lies in large tribes or localities, while handicapping political parties and unaffiliated candidates who have national agendas. In Jordan’s last five parliamentary elections, most of the seats have gone to such independent or “tribal” candidates. Once elected, the MPs have little ability to shape national policy in any event, since the king appoints all other branches of government.

The incentives created are perverse. Voters may feel pushed to back the candidate who returns home bearing spoils from the treasury, rather than the one who represents their vision for the nation. Indeed, deputies in past assemblies have been lambasted for passing out rewards to supporters while ignoring national issues -- one voter, on election day, derided previous parliaments as “service departments.” Polls have found that large portions of the public see parliamentarians as highly corrupt. It is easy to see how this system becomes self-reinforcing. Voters feel that their vote means little on the national stage, while candidates for office seek to become local patrons while feathering their own nests. The result can be vote buying and coercive campaigning.

the “tribal” bias of the election system boosts turnout, since the groups that benefit directly from the parliamentary spoils system show up to keep the spoils coming

ambient mistrust

According to a July 2012 poll by the International Republican Institute, more Jordanians think the country is going in the wrong direction than the right one and many feel deep discontent with the weak economy and perceived government corruption. The same poll found Jordanians taking a dim view of politicians in general, and parliamentarians in particular, who despite being elected appear less popular than royally appointed officials. And in a September 2012 CSS survey, a big portion of the public said the state's reforms had been insufficient -- though large majorities still said it was better to change the system through political action than through street protest.

There are indications that the new parliament is more representative -- or at least more diverse -- than the old one. Candidates from al-Wasat al-Islami, a centrist Islamist party, came away with 16 seats, a substantial increase in their representation. Leftists also picked up around a dozen seats (depending on who is counting). Whether either of these groups will be credible to the protesters in the streets is an open question: In the past, many leftist and Islamist MPs have been characterized as “safe,” regime-aligned candidates rather than a genuine opposition. Palestinian Jordanians likewise seem to have gained ground, now holding roughly 35 seats as opposed to 20 or so in the last parliament. Women’s representation also increased slightly, with women taking two national list seats and two district seats, in addition to 15 seats from the 10 percent quota they are allotted under the election law.

If Parliament is unable to make serious progress toward improving the economy, an item which usually tops the list of the public’s grievances, that will also have consequences. The first challenge the new deputies will face, the yearly budget, will be doubly critical, establishing both the MPs’ economic credentials and their ability to have a serious debate

What the state has won is time, which it may use to carry out a reform program, to appease its core constituents or to do a bit of both. In the past, Jordan’s electoral exercises have generally been preludes to consolidations of regime power. But history is not destiny. The state may travel down the path of reform it has laid out, toward parliamentary government and constitutional monarchy, even at the cost of upsetting its traditional clients. Or it may attempt to delay reform again, using the same bait-and-switch it has employed for decades

The unfolding disaster in neighboring Syria will likely keep security high on the local agenda; on the other hand, the state faces another moment of potential crisis, as sometime early in 2013, probably April, conditions of Jordan's IMF loan agreements will require the state to engage in another round of subsidy removal like the one that triggered the November 2012 unrest

the Revolution did not bring the Islamists to power, rather they seized power in the context of the elections that followed. Notably, it is by shifting debates into the field of identity that they could win these elections, while parties, notably the left, failed to build a single and audible speech in the confusion that reigned

the revolution did not take place in a “fallow” social field or a tabula rasa. The national movement and the struggle for independence contributed to the formation of political and administrative elites. Bourguiba's long reign was not only terror and could not prevent the development of a strong trade union movement, or of a feminist movement still active despite its appropriation under the Bourguibist regime, who built an image of liberating the country and its women,[3] and then under the Ben Ali dictatorship, who used it as an excuse to earn its stripes of modernist despotism, fighting against the Islamist threat. This wealth of mobilization and the social movements’ vigor has had a paradoxical fate: they have produced highly recognized characteristics of modern Tunisia (notably secularism and the status of women), while being the victims of a repression

the extent of the crackdown on leftist movements from 1968 to 1978, under the Bourguiban power, which eventually struck the Islamists, led to the implementation of a "selective" education of contemporary history in primary and high schools, and the Benalist propaganda simply replacing that of Bourguiba

the constitution of the party led by former Interim Prime Minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, Nida Tounès. Such an agglomeration of political forces would have been unimaginable a few years earlier. Indeed, this party brings together many of the former partisans of Ben Ali’s regime - and Bourguiba’s – and, like Essebsi himself, a fraction of the post-communist left under the banner of the struggle against the Islamists and for Tunisia’s modern identity. There are those who have been adversaries for a long time, employing a platform that takes great care to remain on the side of national identity (especially vis-à-vis the outside world), of "progressivism," and of modernity, to avoid social and ideological issues. He stands in front of Ennahda as its mirror image. The emergence of such a force, unknown in terms of electoral score and what this might represent, shows the effect of "retrospective treason" produced by the passage from a revolutionary situation to a new context of electoral democracy. Meanwhile, it gave neither the time nor the effort to develop social positions establishing democracy. The press is weak and most often simply amplifies the voices of political actors without deepening the issues. Associations are quite present but very few of them have taken up the question of democracy, with the possible exception of those who were involved during the campaign

The union has also reaffirmed its independence and willingness to engage itself "alongside civil society and the Tunisian people in its diversity to defend not only the working masses, but also and above all, the Republic and its institutions.[6]” It is not surprising that the UGTT is the only prevailing force. It relies on its 517,000 members, its territorial coverage, and its history.

Here, there seems to be a form of necessary betrayal of the "democratic revolution”—difficult to perceive and to decrypt, bitter to those who experience it, but which certainly does not amount to one party’s representative takeover over the rest.

As a result of Erdogan’s efforts, discussion over the shape of the future of Turkey under a new Constitution will be hijacked by a debate over the future of just one man. Unfortunately, all of this is a distraction from the real issue of how to make Turkey’s government more representative.

Despite radically different attitudes and levels of experience, deputies from all factions took their task overwhelmingly seriously and debated in an open and fruitful atmosphere. The time factor was decisive here. Though criticised by some as “lengthy” and “not efficient”, the fact that the NCA took two and a half years (instead of one as planned) contributed to the creation of cross-party trust – which became one of the “secrets” behind NCA’s success. 

the constitution, as Moncef Cheikh Rouhou, member of the Democratic Alliance in the NCA, has explained, could have been finalised as originally scheduled in December 2012. But then, “we would have received only 70% support, but we wanted to have almost all people agreeing to it.” The “we” includes the Ennahda representatives, who agreed to renounce Sharia as the principle source of legislation and to preserve women’s full equality – not complementarity – to men.

The blatant failure of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt brought all the opponents in Tunis back to the table.

The enduring contribution of external players constituted a third factor that contributed to the NCA’s success. Particularly the influential UGTT trade union, not least with the inclusion of the Employers’ Association UTICA, the League of Human Rights LTDH, and the Bar Association of Lawyers in the “National Dialogue” roundtable meetings, who pushed for keeping talks about the 149 constitutional articles ongoing.

Ennahda remained the only party that continued to favour parliamentarism, while almost all other parties supported semi-presidentialism. A directly elected president, with the major say in foreign, security and defence policy, should counterbalance the prime minister and his cabinet who gain legitimacy from their parliamentary majority. The first is to be expected a secularist, while the latter most likely will be a political Islamist.

high risk of permanent conflict between the head of state and the head of government

many fear that the situation will only get worse under the new education minister, Naftali Bennett, who heads Jewish Home, the settler movement’s far-right party

Nearly 300 schools have been encouraged to join an IDF-education ministry programme called “Path of Values”, whose official goal is to “strengthen the ties and cooperation between schools and the army”.

Revital, an Arabic language teacher, said the army’s lesson plans were popular with pupils. “I don’t approve of them, but the students like them. They celebrate and laugh when they kill the terrorists.”Revital said she had been disciplined for speaking her mind in class and was now much more cautious.“You end up hesitating before saying anything that isn’t what everyone else is saying. I find myself hesitating a lot more than I did 20 years ago. There is a lot more fascism and racism around in the wider society,” she said.

Each school is now graded annually by the education ministry not only on its academic excellence but also on the draft rate among pupils and the percentages qualifying for elite units, especially in combat or intelligence roles.

Zeev Dagani, head teacher of a leading Tel Aviv school who opted out of the programme at its launch in 2010, faced death threats and was called before a parliamentary committee to explain his actions.

Adam Verete, a Jewish philosophy teacher at a school in Tivon, near Haifa, was sacked last year after he hosted a class debate on whether the IDF could justifiably claim to be the world’s most moral army.

“Militarism is in every aspect of our society, so it is not surprising it is prominent in schools too,” said Amit Shilo, an activist with New Profile, an organisation opposed to the influence of the army on Israeli public life.“We are taught violence is the first and best solution to every problem, and that it is the way to solve our conflict with our neighbours.”

“You have to watch yourself because the pupils are getting more nationalistic, more religious all the time. The society, the media and the education system are all moving to the right.”A 2010 survey found that 56 per cent of Jewish pupils believed their fellow Palestinian citizens should be stripped of the vote, and 21 per cent thought it was legitimate to call out “Death to the Arabs”.