March 17th, 2011

Moroccan monarchy’s sacredness: an obstacle to democracy

In an opinion piece for Le Monde, Ahmed Benchemsi, Visiting Scholar to the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, discusses the key obstacles to political reform in Morocco. Read more »

March 15th, 2011

Diamond on Obama's moment of truth

In a piece for The New Republic, Larry Diamond, Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, issues President Obama a call to action as the crisis unfolds in Libya, urging him to seize this pivotal moment that can define or discredit his presidential record. According to Diamond, "If Barack Obama cannot face down a modest thug who is hated by most of his people and by every neighboring government, who can he confront anywhere?" Read more »

March 14th, 2011

Fukuyama on China's potential for revolution

Francis Fukuyama, resident fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, comments on China's potential for popular uprising in a piece for The Wall Street Journal. In the article Is China Next? Fukuyama predicts whether the contagion sweeping through the Arab world will spread to China through a comparative analysis of the two regions. "The bottom line is that China will not catch the Middle Eastern contagion anytime soon. But it could easily face problems down the road." Read more »

February 24th, 2011

Ben Abdallah on Moroccan reform for "Le Monde"

CDDRL Visiting Scholar Hicham Ben Abdallah comments on Morocco's role in the democratic wave sweeping through the Arab world in an article published in the French newspaper Le Monde. "On Sunday February 20, Morocco experienced its first encounter with the wave of democratic change that has been sweeping across the Arab world. In each of several major cities, tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated for the same kinds of demands that we have seen elsewhere: to replace arbitrary and absolute uses of power with real, open democracy, to end the corruption and clientalism that stifles economic life, and to assert the rights of citizens to be treated with dignity and respect and to have a decent life for themselves and their families." Read more »

February 16th, 2011

Larry Diamond: Transition traps

After the peaceful mass uprising that toppled one of the world’s oldest autocracies, it is now possible to imagine the emergence of a genuine democracy in Egypt—the most important country in the Arab world, writes Larry Diamond, director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in The New Republic. The very possibility of it marks an historic turning point for the entire region. However, Diamond cautions, there is a long and often treacherous distance between the demise of an authoritarian regime and the rise of a democracy. Read more »

February 14th, 2011

Larry Diamond: Toppling of Egypt's regime will serve US., Israel

The toppling of Egypt's modern-day pharaoh though peaceful mass protests, aided by Facebook and Twitter, marks a watershed for Egypt and the entire Arab world, writes Larry Diamond, the director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and a prominent expert on democratic transitions, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Contrary to widespread anxieties in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Diamond explains, Mubarak's ouster will also serve the long-term interests of the United States -- and Israel. Read more »

February 7th, 2011

Diamond provides recommendations for a post-Mubarak world

Two decades after the fall of Soviet-bloc dictatorships, popular movements for democracy are erupting in the last regional bastion of authoritarianism: the Arab world. So far, only Tunisia's dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has been toppled, while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak-who has ruled that ancient land longer than many pharaohs-announced Tuesday that he will step down in September. But other Arab autocrats are bound to go. From Algeria to Syria to Jordan, people are fed up with stagnation and injustice, and are mobilizing for democratic change. Read more »

February 2nd, 2011

Francis Fukuyama: Liberals had better get organized

"Recent events in Tunisia and now in Egypt demonstrate that there is no Arab cultural exception to the broad desire for freedom around the world," writes Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal. People want political rights because they want their governments to treat them with dignity, a wish that obviously reverts throughout the Arab world, he states. At present, the best organized forces in Egypt are the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. "Egyptians who want a free and democratic future," he says, "had better get busy organizing themselves."

• » Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal: "Liberals Had Better Get Organized"

February 1st, 2011

Larry Diamond: Prospects for Egypt's political transition

After nearly 30 years on the throne, Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak, will soon follow in the footsteps of Tunisia’s dictator, Ben Ali. The question is not whether he will leave the presidency of Egypt, or even when, but how. In the face of persistent and growing mass protests—and a newfound sense of civic empowerment on the part of Egypt’s long demoralized youthful masses—it is difficult to imagine Mubarak surviving in office for more than another week to ten days. The only question is whether he will see the inevitable and do one last service to his country—leave office gracefully—or whether he will have to be pushed out by the military or deepening chaos on the streets. Read more »

January 27th, 2011

Francis Fukuyama: US democracy has little to teach China

The first decade of the 21st century has seen a dramatic reversal of fortune in the relative prestige of different political and economic models. Ten years ago, on the eve of the puncturing of the dotcom bubble, the U.S. held the high ground. Its democracy was widely emulated, if not always loved; its technology was sweeping the world; and lightly regulated “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism was seen as the wave of the future. The United States managed to fritter away that moral capital in remarkably short order: the Iraq war and the close association it created between military invasion and democracy promotion tarnished the latter, while the Wall Street financial crisis laid waste to the idea that markets could be trusted to regulate themselves. Read more »

How the Kremlin Harnesses the Internet

Hours before the judge in the latest Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial announced yet another guilty verdict last week, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner was already being attacked in cyberspace. No, Khodorkovsky’s Web site, the main source of news about the trial for many Russians, was not being censored. Rather, it had been targeted by so-called denial-of-service attacks, with most of the site’s visitors receiving a “page cannot be found” message in their browsers. Read more »

January 18th, 2011

Larry Diamond on Tunisia's uncertain transition

The toppling of a brutal, corrupt, and long-ruling dictator, Zine el Abidine ben Ali, is an extraordinary achievement for the diverse elements of Tunisian society who came out into the streets in recent weeks to demand change. Ben Ali’s startling fall is another reminder of how suddenly political change can come in authoritarian regimes that substitute force, fear, and fraud for legitimacy. Such regimes may appear stable for very long periods of time, but when the people lose their fear and the army refuses to fire on the people, they can unravel very quickly. Read more »

January 17th, 2011

Tunisia: the house of cards

It took just 29 days for President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee Tunisia after mass protests erupted in the country. Twenty-three years of authoritarian rule crumbling in less than a month is rather remarkable, especially considering the relative “calm” that had prevailed in Tunisia during those two decades. Read more »

January 7th, 2011

Francis Fukuyama in Foreign Policy Magazine: Samuel Huntington's Legacy

This article by Francis Fukuyama is based on a 2008 piece on the website of the American Interest and the preface to the 2006 edition of Political Order in Changing Societies.

• » Foreign Policy Magazine: "Samuel Huntington's Legacy"

September 23rd, 2010

Josh Teitelbaum: The Shiites of Saudi Arabia

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the ensuing alteration of the regional balance of power in favor of Iran, Saudi Arabia has looked at the world through an Iranian and Shiite prism, writes CDDRL Visiting Associate Professor Joshua Teitelbaum in "The Shiites of Saudi Arabia," published in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. This prism, he notes, affects the way it views its neighbor across the Gulf, its position in the Arab and Islamic world, and its own Shiite population.

• » Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, vol. 10: "The Shiites of Saudi Arabia"

August 23rd, 2010

Progress, pitfalls as U.S. troops leave Iraq

With the departure of the last U.S. combat brigade from Iraq, the Obama administration has taken a big step toward its goal of American military withdrawal form Iraq by the end of 2011, writes Larry Diamond for cnn.com. Although there are many other signs of progress, the new milestone in U.S. military disengagement comes at a moment when Iraq is starting to slip backward on the political and the security fronts.

• » CNN.com: "Progress, pitfalls as U.S. troops leave Iraq"

July 26th, 2010

Frank Fukuyama: Time for a Sensible Debate on Immigrants and Crime

Opponents of immigration reform see illegal immigrants as criminals who will disregard U.S. laws once in the country, writes Frank Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal, but they are better described as "informal" rather than "illegal." Reform that provides hardworking illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship should be seen as an effort to move people from a dangerous informal system to one based on a rule of law. Read more »

June 3rd, 2010

CDDRL visiting scholar Gellaw decries Ethiopia's elections

Abebe Gellaw, CDDRL visiting scholar from Ethiopia, writes in the Wall Street Journal on Ethiopia's "embarrassing" elections which delivered a fourth term for Meles Zenawi. Read more »

August 31st, 2009

Back to the future: the Arab nationalist tradition and the political imagination of today

"The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis," CDDRL Visiting Scholar Hicham Ben Abdallah of Morocco writes in an article for the August 2009 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique ("Retour vers le futur dans le monde arabe"). The crisis, he notes, may "give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics." To do so, he adds, "we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism." Read more »

July 31st, 2009

President Alejandro Toledo on restoring trust in democratic institutions in Latin America

"We have seen a trend in a number of our Latin American countries for the executive to bypass the legislature and judiciary by calling for popular referenda that seek to constitutionally eradicate term limits. These 'legal' circumventions of the checks and balances of power become an auto-immune-like disease of the democratic system," Alejandro Toledo, former President of Peru and current Visiting Scholar at CDDRL, stated in an op-ed in the Miami Herald. "With unlimited term limits, even a leader who was at first democratically elected can consolidate enough power to manipulate future elections, thereby undermining the original legitimacy of democracy." Read more »

July 22nd, 2009

CDDRL Visiting Fellow Sumit Ganguly in Forbes

Professor Sumit Ganguly, currently a Visiting Fellow at CDDRL, comments in Forbes on Secretary Clinton's recent visit to India. Read more »

July 10th, 2009

Let's hear from the democracies on Iran, Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani argue in the New York Times

As the presidential electoral turmoil in Iran continues, pitting supporters of challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President Obama has gotten it right, Larry Diamond and Milani say, "by signaling America's support for peaceful protest, human rights, and the rule of law." More explicit language, or action, would only play into the hands of Iran's conservative elements. But the world has more than 100 other democracies, Diamond and Milani note, arguing "It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran." Read more »

June 19th, 2009

CDDRL Visiting Scholar Olena Nikolayenko Analyzes Post-Soviet Youth Movements

Thousands of youths in the post-communist region applied nonviolent resistance methods to protest large-scale electoral fraud. Olena Nikolayenko's post-doctoral project at CDDRL examines why some youth movements were more successful than others in mobilizing populations against repressive regimes. Political learning of autocratic incumbents, her research finds, is contributing to the diminishing power of similar youth movements.
Read more »

May 20th, 2009

Fair Winds for the Brotherhood

The fortunes of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood may be shifting after three difficult years that saw the group's worst electoral result in history, reports of diminished influence, and sustained government repression. Read more »

Turkey's Dangerous Message to the Muslim World

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which fashioned itself as the Muslim equivalent of Europe's Christian Democrats, has stood out by passing a series of unprecedented political reforms as the country's ruling party. Yet the Turkish Constitutional Court - bastion of the hard-line secularist old guard - is now threatening to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from party politics for five years. And the Bush administration, in the face of this impending judicial coup, has chosen to remain indifferent. The consequences could reach beyond a setback to democracy in Turkey and affect the Middle East. Read more »