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This paper presents Tunisian public opinion trends towards the country’s democratic experience, using data gathered by the ACRPS-published Arab Opinion Index, comparing the 2019/2020 results with previous polls. It also seeks to measure the popular reaction to the decisions taken by the Tunisian President, Kais Saied, in his coup against the constitution, and his disruption of democratic governance mechanisms in order to seize control of the government. The paper ponders the reasons that Tunisians welcome the decisions of the Tunisian president, and asks if that means that they have turned their backs on the young democracy they established ten years ago? Finally, the paper monitors a set of indicators regarding Arab public opinion on governing institutions, and the government's seriousness in working to solve economic and social problems, which escalated in severity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

​The Contemporary Syrian Studies Unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies held a two-day workshop on November 17 and 18, 2013 during which a group of distinguished Syrian academics, statesmen and political activists discussed a proposed plan for the democratization of Syria which was published earlier in 2013 by the Syrian Expertise Bureau in coordination with the Syrian Studies Center.

A literature review of the major writings that covered the Arab Spring during the last five years

This testimony, written by one of the pioneers of the Social Sciences in Morocco, explores the evolution of Moroccan political science from the colonial knowledge that sought to develop the tools of control, to the present state of the social sciences, advanced by Moroccan scholars in the wake of independence. The testimony explores the post-independence developments, which seemed to correlate with political events, becoming closer to political analysis, in the framework of a "tendency to sanctify the present". The testimony ends with predictions about the prospects of political science in Morocco and the future research agenda, noting the 21st century developments that coincided with the institutionalization of Moroccan political life.

This section lists the most prominent political documents related to the democratic transition in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish a number of documents from Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya for the period July–August 2022.

عنوان الكتاب في لغته: Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring. عنوان الكتاب: ثورات لم تنتهِ: اليمن وليبيا وتونس بعد الربيع العربي. المؤلف: إبراهيم فريحات. سنة النشر: 2016. الناشر: Yale University Press. عدد الصفحات: 304 صفحة.

Rights groups and social movements in Egypt, including the April 6 Youth Movement developed the Transitional Justice Law based on previous experiences worldwide such as the South African one. Tunisia, which was the starting point of the Arab revolutions, beat Egypt to it by cooperating with the Ministry of Justice in South Africa. In 2003, Morocco established the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to look into human rights abuses from 1956-1999. This paper discusses the possibility of implementing the notion of transitional justice in Egypt and tries to use an approach that puts the national reconciliation and transitional justice mechanisms in their wider framework, i.e. democratic transition and institutional reform based on negotiations with political forces. The paper explores the philosophy of transitional justice, the organizational qualities that contribute to its success and the conditions that help overcome any arising challenges or possible resistance.

​This report highlights some of the major milestones of the Arab democratic transition. The countries covered include Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,Syria and Yemen.

​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.

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.