Bassam Ha
ddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University.
He will be discussing his new book, “Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience.”
*Lunch will be available*
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Wendy Pearlman is the Crown Junior Chair in Middle East Studies and assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University. She discussed her new book, “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement.”
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POMEPS Briefings 8 – January 17, 2011
Yemen seems trapped in an endless political stalemate. More than a year after massive protests erupted challenging the 33-year-old regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen seems no closer to achieving a meaningful political transition. The deadlock has persisted despite the outrage over regime violence against civilians, splits at the top of the military, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the violence and calling for a transfer of power, a Nobel Peace Prize for leading Yemeni protest figure Tawakkol Karman, and the near assassination of Saleh himself. In the absence of a political solution, the humanitarian situation has dramatically worsened and regional conflicts across the country have intensified. Is there any hope for Yemen? [click to continue…]
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POMEPS Briefings 7 – November 28, 2011
On Monday, November 28, Egyptians went to the polls for the first round of parliamentary elections. Those elections are perhaps the most momentous of a recent wave of Arab elections. Tunisia’s election on October 25 went almost unbelievably well. Oman’s went almost entirely unnoticed. Morocco’s played their assigned role. The announcement that Yemen would hold presidential elections in February has thus far been met mostly with disbelief. Elections may be on the horizon in Kuwait, after the resignation of its government, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has announced May 4, 2012 as the date for elections in the West Bank and Gaza. It’s election season in the Middle East. But are elections the right way forward for these countries in transition? Will they change anything?
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January 25, 2012
12:30 – 2:00 pm
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW, Washington, DC
The Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
Three leading political scientists discuss political dynamics and prospects for Yemen.
Panelists:
Stacey Philbrick Yadav
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sheila Carapico
University of Richmond
Laurent Bonnefoy
Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman, France
Centre français d’archéologie et de sciences sociales de Sanaa, Yemen
Moderated by:
Marc Lynch – George Washington University
* A light lunch will be served*
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Three political scientists discussed the implications of Tunisia’s first free elections in October 2011.
Panelists:
John P. Entelis, Fordham University
Chris Alexander, Davidson College
Melani Cammett, Brown University
Moderated by:
Marc Lynch, George Washington University
After Tunisia’s Election
Melani Cammett, associate professor of political science at Brown University, discussed the post-revolutionary institution building in the run up to the elections, the adoption of the electoral law, what it meant for the results, and the challenges that lie ahead. Cammett described how the electoral law and the closed-list proportional representation system were adopted at the discretion of the political reform commission. The consequence of the quota rule of the closed-list PR system was that the political party authorization process ultimately facilitated over 150 parties — there were enormous lists at the polling station, sometimes with 80 parties on a list. This had the effect of fragmenting the vote and wasting a number of votes. Cammett discussed the results of the election, which although were not yet official, showed the Islamist Ennahda party to be taking a significant lead. She observed that the parties that were the most stridently anti-Islamist did the most poorly at the polls and that those parties who expressed a willingness to form coalitions with Ennahda did better. Finally, Cammett closed by discussing the challenges ahead. In her view, the task is not only to write a constitution but also to govern in a climate that remains extremely difficult economically and politically. The first task for Ennahda is to address youth unemployment, which, given the current state of the economy, will continue to present a serious challenge.
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Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Struggle For Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square”
Nine months after the start of the January 25 revolution that saw the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Steven A. Cook helped connect the dots with a look into his new book The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. Even before the revolution, Cook described that it was his intention to write a book about Egypt. To him, the debate on contemporary Egyptian history was very much ossified and stunted, portrayed in a very two-dimensional manner. Egypt was always an unstable and contested political climate.
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Three leading political scientists discuss prospects for Palestinians after the United Nations statehood bid.
Panelists:
Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University
Mouin Rabbani, Institute for Palestine Studies
Nathan Brown, George Washington University
Moderated by:
Marc Lynch, George Washington University
The recent Palestinian decision to apply for full membership at the United Nations Security Council has caused scholars and policy-makers to raise a series of questions that were discussed at the recent event panel, What Should the Palestinians Do Now?
Mouin Rabbani, from the Institute for Palestine Studies in Amman, Jordan, talked about the background to the Palestinians’ U.N. initiative and then gave speculative remarks on what to expect next. In his opinion, the move to the United Nations was initially a threat rather than an actual intention on the part of President Mahmoud Abbas; when the threat failed to provide the desired result, it became an initiative. Rabbani argued that while the goals of the Palestinian leadership can be debated, it is important to also focus on the potential that this initiative may set in motion a series of dynamics that will continue to develop outside of Abbas’ control. One such dynamic is that Abbas now has no choice but to either resume negotiations under conditions that he will never obtain from the United States and Israel or to move forward. To be seen as regressing in the current context would be seen as political suicide as he now has much more to lose. Rabbani also noted that the longer this attempt at internationalization continues, the more likely that the Oslo agreement will no longer be a tenable framework for addressing this conflict. Finally, Rabbani argued that while internationalization has brought renewed attention to the Palestinian cause, this can only be one component of a strategy for the Palestinians. There must also be a process of national reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and the formation of a coherent state.
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The State of the Egyptian Revolution
POMEPS Briefings 6 – September 7, 2011
On January 25, Egyptian activists inspired by the fall of Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali took to the streets chanting against President Hosni Mubarak. Eighteen turbulent, astonishing days later, the Egyptian military removed Mubarak from power. Seven months after Mubarak’s fall, however, Egyptian activists are frustrated and the success of the revolution remains unclear.
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Charles Kurzman, Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill{ Comments on this entry are closed }