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The experience of the Troika in government in Tunisia is a unique one when compared with developments in other Arab Spring states during the transitional period. The Troika was based on an alliance between more than one party, with the forces making up the Troika coming to power via the ballot box. The government formed represented the free will of the Tunisian people and represented them in the constitutional assembly. The experience of the Troika in Tunisia no doubt faced various obstacles, but it recorded some important successes. This study tries to examine the nature of the tripartite ruling alliance, its composition, the level of concord or discord between its components, how solid the alliance is, and its ability to endure in the face of the challenges of the coming political stages and milestones. It concludes that the Troika was able to survive despite factors pulling it apart, dissonance between its components, and the difficult political obstacles that warned of a real split in its structure. It is expected that the experience of a tripartite rule will be repeated in different circumstances, perhaps most significantly in terms of the Tunisian opposition forming a united front to take on the Troika.

For months, the transitional phase in Tunisia underwent a critical historical period that almost foiled efforts to establish a newly-born democratic state and undermined the foundational work of the post-revolution state. In fact, the increasing violence, the high living cost, the raging conflict over power, the intermittent rise of partisan, ideological and religious tensions, the return of the old regime media, the emergence of the harbingers of a counter-revolution and the decrease in Tunisia’s sovereign ranking showed followers of the situation that the Arab Spring in its first cradle was at risk. Citizens felt afraid, and they longed for stability and reassurance. The deteriorating political situation based on polarization and dispute between the ruling troika and the opposition added insult to injury. The paper sheds light on the situation of the prominent influential political parties in Tunisia and on the complexities of the political crisis. It also explores the prospects of the upcoming phase.

The Moroccan February 20 protest movement came with the mobilization of the Moroccan street through peaceful demonstrations demanding constitutional reforms in the framework of a parliamentary monarchy. The king, keen not to replicate what happened in neighboring states, could not ignore the February 20 movement. This pushed him to announce the program for constitutional reform in his speech on March 9, 2011. The strategy of the political regime to contain and defuse the February 20 movement led every initiative, including the project for the 2011 constitution, to become a resource and weapon in the hands of the authorities, and means for the symbolic and material suppression of the February 20 movement. The constitutional referendum of July 1, 2012, which was backed by the people, and which February 20 called to boycott, represented the beginning of the rapid demise of the movement, because it reinforced the legitimacy of reform, and hence the monarchy. The February 20 Movement represents an opportunity to rethink the meaning of opposition in Morocco, particularly when set against analysis formulated in the 1970s by pioneers such as John Waterbury and Rémy Leveau, who concluded that the opposition, despite its differences and variety of protests, served in the end to reproduce the existing political regime.

The study concerns the armed Shiism in Iraq and its most prominent embodiment, the Mahdi Army (MA). It deals with the relationship between the MA and the Sadrist movement, as a case og the relationship between political organizations and their armed wings. It explores the specificity of this relationship, whereby the MA arose within the Najaf Shiite's Hawza . Hence, the MA was not a typical armed wing, but was more like a general beacon of mobilization for the Shiite community in Iraq. MA was the first organizational step for the movement as much as its presence as the armed wing remained an essential pillar, controlling and determining the development of the movement. The study argues that the debate over the extent of armed action led to a struggle over the identity of the movement, between two wings: remaining an armed organization, or turning to political action. Therefore, the leadership's efforts to control MA were intersects with the political struggle between its wings.

An analysis of the results of the 19th Israeli Knesset elections, held in January 2013, indicates a continuation of the political and social changes currently underway in Israeli politics, such as the decline of the major parties and the continuation of traditional voting patterns in Israel. On the other hand, new transformations have been noted, most importantly the dominance of the right on the Israeli political scene. The elections showed the lack of an alternative to the Likud Party. For the first time there was no other party to compete with it to form the government. This came in the context of the increasing strength of the new right in Israel and the decline in the camp of the leftist parties. The election results also showed for the first time the preponderance of the socio-economic factor in determining how to vote, whereas previously the political-security factor had been dominant in determining electoral behavior. This change led the Israeli middle classes to strongly back the Yesh Atid party, which placed the interests of the middle class at the center of its social discourse. Overall, the study makes clear that the analytic of left and right is inadequate for understanding voting patterns in Israeli elections.

This article discusses the failure of the Iraqi political elites to resolve the key problems brought about by the occupation of Iraq in April 2003, even after the declaration of the Iraqi constitution in 2005. The article holds that the new constitution could not be implemented and was unsustainable for purely internal reasons. It was unable to provide answers to the new questions and facts, and the new tactical alternatives it created to produce hybrid regimes from 2006 were incapable of overcoming the structural crisis of the regime. This was especially the case since the attempts described as consensual, aimed to preserve the delicate political situation on the basis of the existing balance of power—rather than on the basis of a governing frame of reference accepted by all—did not transform into binding political conventions for the political groupings representative of the ethnic and religious components of Iraq, and at a minimum did not transform into agreements respected by all sides.

Most initial readings have exhausted their explanations for failure, or stumbling, of the democratic transition process in Tunisia. Given the country’s weak political performance, lack of economic achievement, and worsening corruption, the need has emerged to consider the role of political culture in events since the Tunisian revolution up until President Kais Saied declared a state of emergency on 25 July 2021. Contrary to the prevailing trend in the literature on democratic transition, which has often overlooked the importance of a minimum level of civil political culture taking root, there is an urgent need to recognize its vital role in ensuring the success of any transitional process, especially in the early stages. This paper argues that the absence of a minimum level of political culture has contributed to the fragility of the transitional process in Tunisia, making democracy vulnerable to failure and to the reproduction of authoritarian patterns. Therefore, strengthening this culture becomes a necessity to ensure the sustainability of the democratic transition and avoid setbacks.

​In this section you will find the most important documents on democratic change in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish documents highlighting the political movement in Tunisia demanding democracy and look at the main political changes in Sudan, Iraq and Jordan in March and April 2022.

This study examines the role played by the youth of Morocco, turning this generational group into a political and social force capable of proposing alternative solutions to Morocco's political impasse, introducing dynamism and alternatives along the path to democracy. The question which frames this study is: to what extend did Moroccan youth contribute to the reshaping political culture in the country? How do Moroccan youth conceptualize the transition to democracy, and what happened to their demands? The author adopts a sociological definition of a "generation," meaning that it does not define a generational cohort as a homogenized social group but rather represents a set of people with a shared set of anxieties surrounding their position in relation to other (previous) generations.

​The fourth annual Conference on the Arab Democratic Transition was convened by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Tunis, Tunisia. The 2015 meeting was devoted to theme of violence and politics in contemporary Arab societies. In total, 45 academic papers were rpesented over two days from 12 to 13 September. It came at a time when the Arab region, and particularly those countries within it that witnessed the Arab Spring, was engrossed in massive violence.