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Book Title: Syria’s Via Dolorosa to Freedom: An Attempt at Contemporary History [Arabic]

Book Title: The Lost Narrative [Arabic] Author: Farouk Sharaa Edition: 1st Year of publication: 2015 Publisher: ACRPS, Doha/Beirut Pages: 495

This study breaks from the prevailing discourse portraying minorities as victims, presenting them as multi-dimensional historical actors and analysing their relationship with political modernity and national construction. It demonstrates how sectarian differences were sharpened and Ottoman culture facilitated the manipulation of minority groups by religious elites and the ruling clan. The Assad regime, supported by Alawi clientelism, fuelled fear of Sunni Islam. In addition, the revolution that began in 2011, accompanied by severe violent repression, has turned into a civil war. The Assad employs sectarian vocabulary that targets the Sunni majority in favour of the Shia minority and Iran. It views Damascus as the capital of minorities, seeking to restore demographic change in Syria. The study discusses factors to encourage a pluralist future Syria and focuses on the issue of the state model that must be redefined, taking into account the existence of all sects that share the same political culture, and all of them, including the Sunnis, demand guarantees.

The study defines the "external factor" and determines its impact on the transition process. The study notes that the role of these factors in transition is different from that of "democratization" if the external influence of the revolutions is minimal. This is especially so in the case of spontaneous popular revolutions where the external factor may be influential in the democratic transition, although its impact is decisive only when accompanied by facilitating domestic factors. The study shows the relationship between the external factor and the geostrategic location of the Arab state whereby the external factor becomes more important according to the importance of the state. The study follows the evolution of the principle of supporting democracy in US politics, which has been linked to US interests and has ended up supporting regime stability. It also monitors a regional and international trend of "promoting autocracy".

Multiple International Relations theories brand the international system as anarchist. What is meant by anarchy here is the absence of a central authority at international level to settle conflicts between actors in the international system. This is why states always seek to attain more power, but to do so they cannot adopt idealist policies in the global arena. This theory applies to the way international powers dealt with the Arab revolutions in 2011. International interests in some cases played a key role in the revolutions' development and outcomes. This study characterizes the nature of the international system on the eve of the Arab revolutions and analyzes the degree to which these revolutions interacted with the international system and their outcomes based on the characterization it infers.

​A one-day academic symposium hosted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will bring together experts from Russia, the Arab world and the region to examine Moscow’s latest military intervention in Syria, on Saturday, October 24, 2015. While Russia’s decision to intervene directly in the conflict in Syria comes as the culmination of more than four years of diplomatic and military support for the Assad regime, the move by the Kremlin to deploy its military forces has come as a surprise to many observers, becoming a turning point not only in the militarized revolution within Syria, but also in the broader Middle East and indeed in a larger global arena. To better study the circumstances which gave rise to the Russian maneuver and the outcomes likely to result from it, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will convene “Russian Military Intervention in Syria: Motives, Objectives and Repercussions”. In the highly volatile climate which the Middle East is presently witnessing, selected participants at the meeting will be asked to examine the fallout of Russia’s actions on the future stability of the region.

​​​​​​This section highlights the most significant political document related to democratic transformation in the Arab world. In this issue, we present document from Syria covering the period from July 1 to August 31, 2025.​​​

The Syrian regime opted to hold presidential elections on June 3, 2014. It did this in spite of the dire social catastrophe and sharp political crisis which the country has faced since March of 2011. The race was contended by three candidates, including incumbent president Bashar Al Assad.

Since the time of President Thomas Jefferson, and on through the presidents of the 20th century, the United States has talked about itself as the propagator, protector, and defender of democracy around the world. Yet America has never showed any qualms of forming military and political alliances with authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The US justifies these international alliances on the basis that “not all dictatorships in the world are enemies of the United States, but all the United States’ enemies are dictatorships.” The US therefore adopted a two-track diplomacy: while working to spread democracy (directly or by means of international organizations and NGOs) the US has no issue in supporting autocratic governments when its interests are involved. How did US policy apply to the democratic transformation in the former Eastern bloc states in Europe on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and subsequently, when American values and interests went hand in hand, and how did it then apply to the Arab Spring of 2011, when US values and interests were congruent in some cases and out of sync in others, according to the situation in each country and its strategic importance from America’s perspective? What are the results of these policies and what differences emerge from such a comparison of the Arab and East Europe cases.

The seventh Annual Conference on Democratic Transition focusing on External Factors and the post-2011 Democratic Transition in the Arab Region. The conference, which is being held by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies on 21-22 September 2018, examines the nature of regional and international roles and their impact on the transition to democracy in the Arab countries following the revolutions of 2011.