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​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.

In association with the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies held a three-day conference (January 21-23, 2016) to study the developments associated with the Arab Spring in the intervening five years.

​This article discusses relations between Sudan and Iran against the background of the many Israeli air strikes against Sudan, and asks whether the ruling regime in Sudan favors Iran over the Arab states when it comes to dealing with its political and security concerns, or whether Sudan sees no issue in playing both sides. It also examines the dreams of Islamic leadership and the transnational revolutionary tendency espoused by Hassan al-Turabi, and the effect of this among his disciples in terms of their view of and links with Iran. The study also takes Iranian support for Islamic movements in Gaza via Sudan as an example of cooperation where the tactical and short term intersects with long term strategy. The paper also discusses the Islamists’ coming to power as a result of the Arab revolutions, and the potential for the revival of transnational revolution included in the literature of the Muslim Brotherhood and the effect of this on relations between the Arab states and their collective and individual relations with Iran.

This paper uses the findings of the 2015 Arab Opinion Index to gauge Arab public attitudes towards the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, the international agreement which brought to a close a world crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. The paper also explores Arab attitudes towards the possibility of Iranian non-compliance with the terms of the agreement as well as the possible transformation of Iran into a nuclear capable state. The findings reflect a sharp division within Arab public opinion: 43% of respondents expressed the belief that Iran would abide by the terms of the agreement, with 46% predicting that the country would not follow through with the terms of the multilateral treaty.

Several scholars studying the so-called authoritarian elections argue that the primary motivation for citizens to vote in the Arab world is the pursuit of individual (mostly material) interests driven by clientelism that may take the form of explicit vote-buying or granting services and privileges to electors. However, research overlooked the potential impact of citizens' evaluation of the regime's democratic level on electoral participation. The goal of this study is to fill this gap. The analysis of the eighth round of the Arab Opinion Index (2022) across nine Arab countries—Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, and Mauritania— reveals that individuals who perceive their country as more democratic are more likely to vote, regardless of objective indicators suggesting the undemocratic nature of the political system.

Beginning with a review of existing theories of international relations that discuss policies of penetration, this study examines current politics of the Arab regional order. Four different aspects of penetration are reviewed, including intra-Arab threats, rivalry between Arab states to occupy a central position, historical legacy, and multinational companies. The role of Arab elites in processes of penetration by means of their links with international powers and interests is also considered. The study looks at ‘soft’ penetration through an analysis of language, education, media, and civil society organizations, as well as “blatant penetration” like the occupation of Iraq and the spread of foreign military bases. Beyond Arab state actions, the paper also considers intervention by neighboring regional states. The paper finds that variation in the development of political, social, and economic systems has a corresponding influence on the levels of foreign penetration, infiltration, or influence. It also finds that analyzing the Arab region as a single regional system reveals a deep level of military, social, and economic penetration on all levels.

The youth revolution in Yemen at the beginning of 2011 kindled a ray of hope that the walls of tyranny could be broken down and the country could be pulled back from the clutches of narrowly defined identities. It sharpened the will that formed a “historical bloc” capable of rendering democratic transition successful. However, the youth revolution never transcended the ecstasy of a romantic revolutionary act to reach the stage of building institutions capable of enforcing respect for the law and accommodating ethnic, tribal, sectarian and political pluralism. This study addresses the impact of the Saudi-Iranian role on Yemen's transition. It is premised on considerable importance attached regional factors, which perhaps have even greater influence than domestic factors on the outcome of the Yemeni revolution. The study stresses that the effects and limits of regional factors are related to several variables, such as the vicissitudes of international politics; international and regional balances and interests; as well as the strategic location of the country subject to interference; its resources; its internal dynamics; the maturity of local elites; the weight of political opposition; and the quality of institutions.

Results from the Arab Opinion Index indicate that the Arab public is strongly conscientious of the threat posed by Zionism. Since 2011, Israel has continuously been identified by Arab respondents as the single greatest threat to collective Arab security, ahead of both the United States and Iran. The survey data also demonstrate that the Arab peoples are opposed to mutual diplomatic recognition between their countries and Israel, despite the fact that a number of Arab countries have already concluded peace treaties with Israel. When asked to justify their positions, respondents offered explanations which went beyond security concerns, describing Israel as a “colonialist” and “expansionist” state which is racist towards Arabs.

From a purely political perspective, tyranny and oligarchic rule have continued to be the dominant characteristic of Arab politics. Authoritarianism has “strangled” the Arab citizen. Will an over-arching Arab liberal tendency be able to overcome sectarian, political and religious tensions to affect a comprehensive reform of Arab political culture? The search for a definitive answer to this question proves difficult. The presumed link between the question of (political) reform within the Arab countries, in general terms, and a liberal perspective from foreign cultural contexts is supported by only a tenuous hypothesis. Such a presumptive hypothesis cannot guarantee results in a cultural and social environment completely alien from the one in which the principles of liberalism first emerged. This author calls for a revitalized conceptualization of liberty which is culturally appropriate to the Arab context while maintaining its connection to global contemporary civilization: it would be a conceptualization which liberates Arab societies from historicism and a blatant emulation of the West.

Despite the state attracting considerable attention as a topic of study from Arab thinkers and intellectuals since the 19th century, the study of individual-level orientations toward the state using survey data has remained relatively marginal, both in English and in Arabic scholarship. Indeed, we still do not know much about Arab citizens' positions toward many of the debates that have long been present in Arab intellectual circles regarding the ontological nature of the so-called "Arab state" and the preferable ideological form it should take. This study seeks to fill this gap by focusing on the post-2011 period. It analyses how Arab citizens understand the state, the extent to which they distinguish it from the ruling regime, their orientations toward the ideological debate around the unified Arab state versus the nation-state, as well as around the religious Islamist state versus the civil state. It also examines the individual-level determinants of these orientations.