The Struggle over Democracy in the Middle East

Nathan Brown and Emad Shahin have edited a new book, The Struggle over Democracy in the Middle East, which examines “democracy and democratization in the light of regional realities rather than the wishful thinking of outsiders.”  Addressing themes such as sectarianism, culture, religion, and security “specialists from the region analyze democratic prospects in the region, while accomplished scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom analyze Western policy, providing a wide-ranging survey of the efforts of individual countries and the effect of external influences.”

Some of the chapters include:

The Myth of the Democratizing Monarchy by Shadi Hamid; New Wine in Old Bottles? American Efforts to Promote Democracy in the Arab World by Nathan Brown and Amy Hawthorne; and Democracy, Islam and Secularism in Turkey by Ersin Kalaycioglu.

The book also investigates the prospects for a democratic constituency in the Middle East, the lessons of Eastern Europe, sectarianism in Lebanon, and the relationships between democracy, security and religion in the region.