Research & Commentary Results

The literature on democratic transitions from the last 50 years has emphasized the process of transforming an authoritarian state into a democracy. Much has been written about negotiations between ancien regimes and democratic forces, particularly the bridges that must be made between elements of old and new regimes. Most studies on democratic transitions also examine the competency or democratic nature of such countries’ institutions.

This article was co-written by Sigurd Neubauer. Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.

In this MEI Policy Paper, Ross Harrison asserts that a new regional order is emerging out of the conflicts of the Middle East. The relationships among the pillars of this order–Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran–are crucial, as they will largely determine “whether the future of the Middle East will be a continuation of the current chaos and destruction or a more positive transition toward stability and prosperity.” Harrison argues that global powers must concentrate on creating conditions conducive to cooperation among the pillars.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy‘s South Asia Channel.

What Egyptians call the azmit al-iskan—the housing crisis—is exemplified by the 1986 movie, Karakon fi-l-Shari‘a, or Prison in the Street. The film depicts a typical middle class family that, evicted from its condemned home, must resort to living in a horse-drawn caravan because a regular apartment is unaffordable. The “prison” in the title is a reference to the father’s numerous altercations with the police, who deem his attempts to make a home quasi-legal—not illegal, but also not legal.

Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen is not surprising given Riyadh’s past policies and current perspectives on Gulf security. Yemen has always suffered from varying degrees of chaos and civil strife. Even in the best of times, large areas of the country lacked government control, and few if any in the region saw it as a functioning nation state. Whatever Gulf Arab leaders may have said publicly, most have viewed Yemen as a loose collection of autonomous or even independent regions, held together only by the lines drawn on a map.

In the 1930s, several groups of Muslim students from China arrived to study at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. They were destined to play an important role in the history of modern Chinese Islam. These 35 Chinese Azharites, all but two from the Sinophone Hui community, helped China to establish lasting links with Egypt and other Muslim countries in the Middle East. They also left a considerable cultural legacy, including translations of crucial texts from both the Islamic and Chinese traditions.

As the urban historian Lewis Mumford pointed out, “When a city has reached the megapolitan stage, it is plainly on the downward path: it needs a terrific exertion of social force to overcome the inertia, to alter the direction of the movement, to resist the immanent processes of disintegration.”^[1]

April 23, 2015 – Marvin Weinbaum, director of the Center for Pakistan Studies at The Middle East Institute, explains Pakistan’s decision not to provide military aid for Saudi Arabia’s operation in Yemen, and how Prime Minister Sharif is working to repair relations with Riyadh.

Read the full article on CNN.

Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have always been thorny, but rarely has the state of affairs been as venomous as it is today.

Tehran and Riyadh each point to the other as the main reason for much of the turmoil in the Middle East. In its most recent incarnation, the Iranian-Saudi conflict by proxy has reached Yemen in a spiral that both sides portray as climatic.

President Obama’s decision to lift the freeze on delivery of military aid to Egypt was the right thing to do to shore up a key strategic alliance in a region where risks to U.S. security are multiplying rapidly. The United States needs Egypt’s help in confronting terrorist and conventional threats in the region, in maintaining Arab-Israeli stability, and as a key player in Arab diplomacy and coalition building.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, reiterating Turkey’s support for a diplomatic solution over the use of force regarding Iran’s nuclear program, welcomed the interim deal between Tehran and the world powers. Turkey’s slowing economy may be among the first to reap economic benefits from the deal, and Ankara’s longtime quest to become an energy hub could finally be realized. Yet the deal could also pose a challenge to Ankara’s Iraq and Syria policies and its recent rapprochement with the Saudis.

In March, Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court suspended the country’s long-awaited parliamentary elections,[1] originally scheduled to begin March 21.

Egypt is not out of the dark, but there is reason to be hopeful. The nation’s energy market reforms and consistent debt repayments have won the attention and approval of international energy companies and investors in the form of significant investment in the Egyptian energy sector. New upstream (exploration and production) oil and gas contracts, a recent increase in renewable energy ventures, and dozens of additional preliminary agreements in both the hydrocarbon and utility sectors are proof of the improved investment climate.