“As austerity protestors clash with security forces in Tunisia, the country’s young democracy is threatened by a triple challenge: Insecurity, a lack of socioeconomic development and persistent corruption are interlinked and reinforce each other. Individually and in concert they undermine citizens’ confidence in the democratic system and hamper its ability to produce democracy dividends. Corruption is the most pernicious of…
Governance
The Frailties of Lebanese Democracy: Outcomes and Limits of the Confessional Framework
“Lebanon is frequently referred to as a model of a plural and stable democracy in the Middle East: a multi-ethnic and pluri-religious society that guarantees political representation through a power-sharing confessional framework. Numerous authors also see the consociational model as the best democratic alternative given such a high degree of domestic heterogeneity. However, by emphasising Lebanese stability vis-à-vis a troubled…
Introduction to Measuring Women’s Political Empowerment Across the Globe: Strategies, Challenges, and Future Research
“This chapter establishes definitions of key concepts such as women’s political empowerment and establishes the theoretical and empirical goals of this volume. We identify the complexities in defining women’s global political empowerment, critically review prior research on elites and masses to develop definitional and measurement goals, and tie women’s global political empowerment to broader social concerns and processes. We briefly…
Political Elites in the Middle East and North Africa
“The Middle East and North Africa, consisting of most of the Arab League members plus Iran, Israel, and Turkey, are regions of the traditional Muslim homeland that lie closest to Europe and where post-colonial elites were particularly conditioned by the dialectics of emancipation. The more protracted the struggle, the greater the opportunities to forge populations into new nations led by…
How Global Citizenries Think about Democracy: An Evaluation and Synthesis of Recent Public Opinion Research
“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, individual scholars and research institutes have conducted numerous public opinion surveys to monitor how global citizenries react to the process of democratization taking place in their own countries and elsewhere. This article reviews the various issues surrounding the divergent conceptions of democracy among political scientists and ordinary citizens, and synthesizes…
The Process of Revolutionary Protest: Development and Democracy in the Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011
“Research on democratic revolution treats revolutionary protest, and revolutionary protest participation, as unitary events. This conceptualization is at odds with how `revolutionary’ protest often unfolds—protest does not begin life as democratic or revolutionary but grows in a process of positive feedback, incorporating new constituencies and generating new demands. Using an original event catalogue of protest during the twenty-nine days of…
Maghreb Report
News article cites survey stating 83 percent of Algerians said they are either not interested or not at all interested in politics due to their expectation that the army will select the winner. Read full article at Morocco on the Move.
Determinants of input- and output-oriented conceptions of democracy in the Arabic world: a multi-level analysis (German)
“Since the 1990’s, more and more studies have been analyzing conceptions of democracy. This study focuses on determinants of conceptions of democracy in the Arabic world. Thereby, we distinguish between input- and output-oriented conceptions of democracy. Whereas the former ones are highlighting procedural elements of democracy, the latter ones focus on materialistic aspects of democracy. We test different theories (modernization…
Exploring Support for Democracy Across the Globe
This report is the first comprehensive analysis on the state of support for democracy across the globe using data from the Global Barometer Surveys. The focus is on support for democracy both because democracy is at the core of the GBS surveys, and because, as a political system, it is currently facing an uphill battle to defend its legitimacy. By exploring the state of support for democracy…