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The National Index for Democratic Transition in Iraq is a local initiative to measure democratic progress in Iraq, in an environment marked by multiple foreign indicators, which — despite their importance — are mostly based on general information derived from media or political reports. Some of their sources are neither documented nor qualified. National Index for Democratic Transition in Iraq is conducted by the Governance Center for Public Policies, a think tank based in Baghdad, to meet the need for an index based on a local perspective. A team of Iraqi academics from different disciplines contributed to building the index, and it has been conducting annually since 2018, with four reports published to date. Prepared specially for Siyasat Arabiya, this text represents a summary of the results of the four reports, and the state of democratic transition in Iraq, nearly two decades after the US invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

This study monitors the role of external factors in the stability of Moroccan authoritarianism and controling the liberalization methods pursued by the government over two stages: the final years of the Cold War and the 2011 Arab Spring. As much as these factors contributed to widening the margin of liberalization in the Moroccan political arena, they also contributed to limiting this liberalization (September 11, the post-2013 counterrevolutionary movement), especially given the lack of internal will to mature it. While it is true that these factors have made an impact, this remained within certain limits that allowed actors abroad (the United States, the European Union and donor institutions) to control the transformations of Moroccan politics and to manage contradictions, thus creating an environment hostile to democratic transition in Morocco.

​This report documents the most significant Palestinian events and developments related to the Arab-Israeli conflict between July 1 and August 31, 2024.

Discussions regarding the relative success of Tunisia's democratic transition, argues Ladrissi, remain premature. His paper examines the extent to which particular Tunisian specificities could explain the relative success of Tunisia to date when compared to other Arab Spring states: the role of women in society; the legacy of founding president Bourguiba; and the role of Tunisian civil society. The paper asks if Tunisia will ultimately succeed in sowing the seeds of a permanent and lasting democracy. It sets out from the assumption that a functioning democratic system is predicated on three main factors: political dialogue; social homogeneity; and an organic state. Later, the author moves on to examine three distinct, if seemingly interdependent, aspects of transitional justice: the political responsibility of the previous political leadership; the criminal liability of those leaders for violations of human rights; and responsibility in questions of bribery and corruption. Finally, the paper summarizes three major threats to the Tunisian democratic experiment: the country's economic crisis, the weakening of the Tunisian state and terrorism.

​​​This report includes documentation of the main milestones in the process of democratic transformation in the Arab world during the period from March 1 to April 30, 2025.​​​

This paper discusses the relationship between Egypt’s military and security institutions, on the one hand, and the forces of the revolutionary movement since January 25 2011, on the other. It evaluates this relationship by looking at how it evolved during Egypt’s revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. It achieves this by breaking events down into three main phases: an initial transitional phase managed directly by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF); Mohamed Morsi’s presidency; and the revolutionary movement after Morsi’s ouster. Based on observations of the three main junctures, this paper carries out a detailed reading of the major events in each phase and analyzes the impact that each had when it came to shaping the relationship between the military and security institutions. The paper sees distinct characteristics of the relationship between these central institutions at each phase, and assesses the impact of these different moments on the political process in Egypt more generally

This study employs digital sociology approaches to trace networked communities and the contexts of their formation, development, or disintegration in relation to the social and political environment in which they emerge, with a particular focus on the impact of their culture on shaping public opinion in Morocco. The study assumes that contemporary communities, despite the digital nature of their medium, remain structurally connected to their traditional meaning grounded in similarity and cohesion, while being reconfigured within a networked society that fosters the rise of a "mass self". Based on network analysis, the study explores the transition of the individual from an autonomous unit to an active "collective person" within decentralized networked spaces that have contributed to reshaping the relationship between power and society, and between individuals and institutions. It also highlights the shift of political and symbolic conflict to the networked sphere and the emergence of new forms of participation, mobilization, and influence, turning networked communities into a social force capable of shapin – and at times producing – public opinion.

This text is considered foundational to international relations, in defence of the theoretical model of realism, which was subjected - after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union - to heavy criticism, glorifying what they described as "the triumph of Western liberalism" and beginning an academic debate on the value of realist theory to the field. The value of this text comes from its author, Kenneth Waltz, who is considered the founder of structural realism and who established this theory through his formative book Theory of International Politics (1979), which is considered the most influential IR work of the Cold War era. In this text, Waltz responds to the criticism levelled at realism, demonstrating its capacity to interpret in spite of changes in the structure of the international system.

This paper attempts to study a wider trend of jihadist groups with a globalist outlook, a phenomenon which was not entirely clearly understood when the Syrian revolution broke out. Since only the broad outlines of this trend are apparent, leaving many of the details as yet unclear, the author shall attempt to illuminate the environment in which these groups operate. Specifically, the paper examines “Nusra Front” (known in full as the “Nusra” or “Salvation” Front for the People of Syria). The paper follows the foundation of the group and the circumstances which allowed it to flourish and spread across Syria through to the internal divisions which led to its fragmentation before it made way for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The conclusion of this paper surveys some of the immediate and secondary consequences of the spread of both of these groups.

​This paper aims to analyze European Gulf relations based on the Interdependence created by the 1988 agreement, and the subsequent transformations in the relationships. The interdependence approach assumes that there is an overlap of interests between both parties, and a degree of mutual engagement, thus limiting conflict and enhancing cooperation and coordination, which entails harmonizing the movement of its parties within the international system. Nonetheless testing the effectiveness of this approach in the context of a crisis which divides one of the parties (the Gulf in our case) remains problematic. The paper tries to probe this issue, and reveal the limitations of the interdependence model in this context. It similarly attempts to test the impact of the Gulf Crisis on a European Sub Policy towards the Gulf by analyzing the behaviours of the main actors in the EU (Germany, France, and- despite brexit- the UK).