Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

More documents

Recommendations

Info

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • Tunisia magical moments—unpredictable, infrequent, but in the longer scheme of things inevitable—when stagnant order gives way to vibrant change. The people of Tunisia shouldn’t have had to wait for WikiLeaks to learn that the U.S. saw their country just as they did. It’s time that the gulf between what American diplomats know and what they say got smaller. Tom Malinowski is Washington director of Human Rights Watch. 62
foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • TUnisia What Tunisia Will Mean for Arab Democracy BY STEVEN HEYDEMANN Even as Tunisians struggle to create a new political order, the popular overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, is reshaping politics across the Middle East. Arab regimes have often been criticized as sclerotic and archaic; they are neither. Over the past two decades, they have confronted and overcome a wide range of challenges that have caused authoritarian governments to collapse in many other world regions. Arab regimes have demonstrated their resilience in the past, and they continue to do so in the wake of the Tunisian uprising. If the United States and its allies wish to exploit the Tunisian example to widen processes of democratic change in the Arab world, they will need to adapt as well. Over the past two decades, Arab regimes have absorbed and survived the shock of the political transformations of 1989, the democratization of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through trial and error, they have developed strategies for managing pressures for political reform and fending off the democracy-promoters of the West, in part by appropriating the rhetoric of democracy and turning it to their own advantage. They have learned how to control Islamist political participation, regulate new media technologies, and broker new divisions of labor between state and market in pursuit of economic development. In several cases, including Syria, they have safely navigated leadership successions that were seen as moments of vulnerability for regimes that built huge personality cults around their leaders. Like their democracy-promoting adversaries, authoritarian regimes too 63
Page 1 and 2:
Revolution in the Arab World Tunisi
Page 3 and 4:
foreign foreign policy policy • r
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
foreign policy • revolution in th
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22: foreign policy • revolution in th
Page 71: foreign policy • revolution in th
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204:
Page 205 and 206:
Page 207 and 208:
Page 209 and 210:
Page 211 and 212:
Page 213 and 214:
Page 215 and 216:
Page 217 and 218:
Page 219 and 220:
Page 221 and 222:
Page 223 and 224:
Page 225 and 226:
Page 227:
show all

Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?