Recent appointments by Saudi King Abdullah are essential to implementing the 2007 judicial reforms, which are beginning to disentangle the judiciary from the executive branch.
The Emirates' efforts to improve higher education are impressive, but it is unclear how far they can go without improvements to basic education as well.
Opposition Shi'i deputies in parliament have had unusual success lately in getting agreement from pro-government Sunni deputies on amending the constitution to increase the powers of the elected lower house. But even with such cooperation the legislative process will be nearly impossible to navigate.
A government-opposition agreement to postpone parliamentary elections paves the way for a broader debate on political reform.
The principal opposition coalition is threatening to boycott April parliamentary elections.
When does contestation between the legislative and executive branches become too much of a good thing?
President-elect Obama’s administration must not give any inkling that Iraq is becoming less important to Washington if it wants to shore up real but fragile gains in Iraqi stability.
Senior Saudi officials have announced recently that they will soon begin trying terrorism suspects held in connection with a series of major attacks that began in 2003. The use of the court system to battle extremism was not possible while the government perceived al-Qaeda as an existential threat; clearly it has now been downgraded to an internal security threat.
Kuwait remains a classic rentier state, living on natural resources alone and unwilling or unable to diversify, reform, democratize, or otherwise change for the better. If anything, the emirate should be wallowing deeper in autocracy as state dependence on oil rises. Yet the politics of the country belie this.
The municipal elections currently underway in Saudi Arabia are the kingdom's first since 1963, when the last municipal races were held in the Western province.
As the reform agenda for the Arab world continues to expand, it is time to integrate the issue of security sector reform into the discussion. Only in Iraq and Palestine is security reform a vibrant topic for local debate and for support or intervention by the international community.
The Republic of Yemen looks relatively democratic compared to its neighbors. While Saudi Arabia is now holding local elections and smaller Gulf states have taken modest steps towards increased political participation in recent years, until now only the Kuwaiti parliament (the only such assembly in the world elected by a small male electorate) has been a force to be reckoned with.
The State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative represents a critical element in the Bush administration's policy of attempting to transform the Arab world into a zone of liberal democracies and free market economies.
Qatar is frequently described as being at the vanguard of democratization in the Arab world. A look at the tiny Gulf emirate's new reformist constitution, approved in an April 2003 popular referendum, shows that the document has significant limitations, even as compared to other Arab constitutions.
Islah, Yemen's Islamist party, had its poorest showing yet in elections for the lower house of parliament on April 27, 2003. Islah won just 46 of 301 seats, down from 56 in 1997 and 63 in 1993. Islah gained nine new seats in the capital, Sanaa, but lost in several traditional strongholds. The ruling General People's Congress (GPC) party gained a more-than-comfortable 75 percent majority.
Not since the Iranian revolution has the issue of Shiite political development been of such interest to observers of Middle Eastern politics.
Ten days of raucous student demonstrations across Iran in June prompted fresh predictions of the Iranian regime's imminent demise. But by July, regime hardliners had regained the upper hand by arresting some four thousand people. This summer's back-and-forth is yet another indication that in Iran a highly contentious but gradual process of political change is more likely than revolution.
Saudi Arabia's burgeoning reform movement presented its latest petition to King Fahad bin Abdul-Aziz, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, and the Minister of Defense Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz on September 24. Titled "In Defense of the Nation," the document was signed by 306 Saudi men and women [click here to read an English translation of the petition].
Is America serious about democracy and political reform in the Arab world? Does the neo-Wilsonian dimension of the Bush administration's policy toward the region presage a decisive departure from the longstanding realist policy of "regime maintenance"?
Amy Hawthorne's article in the September 2003 Arab Reform Bulletin, "The Middle East Partnership Initiative: Questions Abound," is a welcome recognition of President Bush's commitment to reform across the Arab world.