When Kofi Annan announced his plans to step aside as special envoy for the conflict in Syria by the end of the month, he put much of the blame on the United Nations Security Council for the failure to make peace in the war-ravaged country.

"When the Syrian people desperately need action, there continues to be finger pointing and name calling in the Security Council," Annan said. "It is impossible for me or anyone to compel the Syrian government and also the opposition to take the steps to bring about the political process. As an envoy, I can't want peace more than the protagonists, more than Security Council or the international community, for that matter."

The uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad began in March 2011 and rights activists say it has left more than 19,000 dead. Annan became the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria in February, with the goal of getting both sides to put down their weapons. He designed a six-point plan for peace, which was never fully implemented.

Stephen J. Stedman, FSI's Freeman Spogli Senior Fellow, and Larry Diamond — a senior fellow at FSI and the Hoover Institution as well as director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law — offer their analysis of the impact of Annan's resignation.

Does the resignation of Annan, who is well respected among diplomats, signal that there is no hope for peace in Syria?

Diamond: I think it's been apparent for several weeks, at least, that the peace mission was doomed, that the Assad regime was not prepared to negotiate, and that the refusal of Russia and China to agree to any kind of meaningful pressure on the Assad regime has left violent resistance by the opposition and the society as the only option.

Syria is sinking deeper and deeper into all-out civil war, and only an escalation of military pressure and economic sanctions on the Assad regime and its principal leaders and supporters offers any hope of resolution. Sometimes, when one or both parties refuse to negotiate, the only way to end a civil war is for one side to win. Libya provides the most recent example of that. If Assad and his allies are going to negotiate a peaceful exit, it will only be because they are staring at the prospect of fairly imminent military defeat.

Could Annan have done something differently?

Diamond: It is very difficult to negotiate with a regime that is bent on repression and total domination, especially when you can't credibly threaten to impose formidable costs on the regime if it refuses to compromise. I don't think there was anything more that Annan could have done, because he had no leverage, no tools to work with, as a result of the inability of the Security Council to agree on tough sanctions.

Will the failure to make peace in Syria tarnish Annan's legacy?

Stedman: The failure to make peace in Syria should not and will not tarnish Annan's legacy. First, he is already a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and one failure in an extraordinarily difficult case does not diminish the rest of his diplomatic successes. With regards to Syria, no one expected him to succeed, but he needed to try and he needed to be seen to try. His position was special envoy of the Security Council, and if anyone is looking for a scapegoat they should start looking at the council.

Diamond: No, I don't think this will tarnish Annan's legacy. He had a nearly impossible mission; everyone knew that. The failure was a collective failure of the international system, not the failure of an individual mediator. Annan is a great man who has made major contributions to world peace and security. It's not his fault that a brutal regime, backed by the world's two most powerful authoritarian states, refused to negotiate.

Brooke Donald is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

In less than a week, Egypt has witnessed a reversal of many of the gains it made during the course of the 16-month revolutionary period. The interim military body guiding the transition period since Hosni Mubarak's ouster has consolidated its power by dissolving the Islamist-led parliament, introducing a new charter stripping presidential powers, and hand-picking an assembly to draft a new constitution.

In the midst of this counter-coup by Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), presidential run-off elections took place June 16 and 17. The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammad Mursi emerged as the winner against Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak's former prime minister, capturing 51.7% of the vote.

A former academic who earned a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southern California, Mursi is a relative newcomer to the Egyptian political scene having served in parliament from 2000-2005. Described as a behind-the-scenes operator, Mursi rose to lead the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in 2011 positioning himself as a presidential contender. While little is known about Egypt's first democratically elected president, many claim that Mursi was elected less for his personal politics than for his affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Lina Khatib, head of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, weighs in on the upheaval in Egypt's revolution, the power of the presidency, and the steps the SCAF have taken to cement their rule.

Have the SCAF outsmarted the opposition in their recent grab for power?

Looking back at the 16 months since the start of the Egyptian revolution, it becomes clear that the SCAF were hedging their bets to come up with a political formula that would guarantee the continuation of their political and economic authority. For a while the Muslim Brotherhood was almost in bed with the SCAF, but the equation quickly changed after the parliamentary elections. As the Brotherhood arose as a potentially serious challenger to the SCAF, the military needed an effective strategy to undermine its rising power.

In what way was the Muslim Brotherhood posing a challenge to the SCAF?

The (now-dissolved) parliament was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which claimed 46% of the seats. With Mohammad Mursi the president-elect, the Muslim Brotherhood would have presided over two key state institutions - the legislative and executive branches. That would have been too much for the SCAF to bear, particularly as they started perceiving the Brotherhood as a political competitor. Based on this, the SCAF could safely calculate that fresh parliamentary elections — under a revised electoral system — would most likely not lead to a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament.

With no constitution in place how can the presidential powers and limits be defined?

The stalled process of putting together a Constitutional Assembly means that Mohammad Mursi assumes this role without knowing the full authorities of the position. The SCAF have been managing the membership of the Constitutional Assembly and will likely have a significant input into the content of the constitution itself. The sequencing of having a president in place before a constitution is drafted presents the military with the opportunity to design the constitution according to who wins the presidential race. If Ahmed Shafiq had won, it is likely that the new constitution would have given him more privileges than Mursi.

With Mursi the new president of Egypt, does this signal a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood?

The Muslim Brotherhood has been shortsighted in the way it has performed since the start of the Egyptian revolution. Its keenness on ascending to political power often led it to engage in compromises with the SCAF that have now backfired. This also served to lessen its support among the Egyptian people, as well as among its political allies. Although the Brotherhood pushed for the presidential elections to go ahead because it was convinced that Mursi would win, this victory can be viewed as only a partial one as the SCAF are in control of most state institutions.

Have recent events reversed the gains made by the revolution?

The real victory for Mursi would be if he is able to put in place checks and balances on the power of the SCAF, secure the independence of the judiciary, guarantee the rights of minorities, and establish an accountable civil state in Egypt that involves the country’s multiple stakeholders. However, the SCAF have so far blocked the path towards achieving all of those goals, and in the process are attempting to silence the voices of the opposition that were initially empowered by the revolution.

How can reformers re-assert themselves in the current political climate?

Egyptian reformists need a long-term strategy. A key part of this strategy is having a viable leadership and advocacy structure that can stand up to the authority of the SCAF. Even though the SCAF have announced that they would hand over power to the incumbent president, their behavior indicates that they are keen on maintaining their authority behind the scenes, regardless of who sits in the presidential seat.

As the Arab world undergoes an unprecedented period of political transition, many are looking towards a new development model to spur economic growth and social advancement. The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law examined this question during its third annual conference on April 26-27, 2012 at Stanford University. The conference featured leading academics, practitioners, and activists, who looked beyond economics to present a more integrated framework for development.

According to ARD Program Manager Lina Khatib, "A goal of the conference is to present an integrated approach to development in the Arab world, particularly in places witnessing democratic transition, which links social, political, and economic factors."

The conference included a diverse array of speakers hailing from the political and social sectors, representing youth leaders, religious minorities, women's rights advocates, and civil society representatives, who joined economists to discuss new regional frameworks for development.

Conference speakers included: Mona Makram Ebeid, who has a long and distinguished career as a parliamentarian in Egypt, commenting on the challenges facing minority rights in democratic transition; Hedi Larbi, director of the Middle East department at the World Bank, who will address the issue of oil dependency and how it constrains economic development in the Gulf region; Libyan NGO leader Rihab Elhaj who co-founded The New Libya Foundation and who will speak about the important role civil society plays in the development equation; and Valentine Moghadam, professor of sociology at Northeastern University and a leading expert on gender issues, who will examine political development through a gender lens.

To view the complete program and download the presentation documents and conference report, please click here.

The Arab Spring has unleashed powerful social forces across the region ignited by young people seeking to reclaim their countries from the hands of long-standing dictators. In the aftermath of the revolutions, this younger generation has expressed a greater interest and responsibility towards improving their communities. Faced with crumbling economies and rising unemployment, young people in the region are combining their activism and entrepreneurial ingenuity to launch new businesses and non-profit organizations.

A new research study entitled, Social Entrepreneurship: Why is It Important Post Arab Spring? released by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law finds that economic conditions coupled with social changes unleashed by the Arab Spring have created an environment ripe for social entrepreneurship.

Operating where the public and private sector have failed, social entrepreneurs introduce new ideas and approaches to solve intractable development challenges in their local communities. Applying business principles towards a social cause, social entrepreneurs create new programs, reforms, and goods that benefit disadvantaged and marginalized segments of society. Leading innovations in the non-profit and business sectors, they have generated new employment opportunities for youth, worked towards building more inclusive societies, and advanced sustainable environmental practices.

As more aid dollars flow towards social entrepreneurship programs, little research has been conducted to examine the sector post Arab Spring. Researchers with the Stanford Program on Arab Reform and Democracy launched this study to assess general economic conditions, attitudes towards entrepreneurship, and the challenges social entrepreneurs currently face.

The Stanford research team used data from an online survey issued in Arabic and English to more than 12,000 residents in 18 Arab countries by Bayt.com, the leading online jobsite in the Arab region, and YouGov, a research and consulting organization. The survey targeted respondents who are on average younger, better educated, and more technologically connected than the general Arab public—previous research issued by the Brookings Institution suggested that this target group is predisposed towards the entrepreneurial sector.

Citizen-led uprisings have inspired a new generation of youth who are increasingly invested in the future development of their societies across the larger region.

Youth-led social and economic development: One of the most revealing findings in the study uncovered the changing perceptions and attitudes of young people towards the long-term development of their societies after the revolutions. Citizen-led uprisings have inspired a new generation of youth who are increasingly invested in the future development of their societies across the larger region. In Arab Spring countries 71% of respondents in Egypt and 75% in Tunisia expressed interest in improving their communities, revealing this upward trend.

According to Jacqueline Kameel, managing director of Nahdet el Mahrousa, the first social enterprise incubator in Egypt, "Youth are more vocal than ever now, they have a sense of responsibility towards Egypt, believing that if we don't do enough now, we might never have a similar chance to take the lead and impact the future of Egypt." In addition, the survey found that volunteerism is on the rise with nearly one-third of Egyptian and Tunisian youth currently volunteering their time at local NGOs, religious establishments, and schools. These trends represent promising pathways towards social entrepreneurship for the region's youth.

Rising unemployment leads to increased interest in self-employment: The results revealed deteriorating economic conditions across the larger region, impacting all age groups and economic levels. However, the effect on countries that experienced protracted revolutions is particularly stark with 58% of respondents in Tunisia, 68% in Egypt, and 71% in Syria indicating that their employment situation now is either worse or much worse than before the revolutions. Those working in the private sector have been disproportionately impacted by the Arab Spring than their counterparts in the public sector, suffering higher levels of unemployment.

Despite this fact, respondents across the region expressed a strong desire to work in the private sector, reflecting a move away from the government as a primary employer. The survey also revealed widespread interest in business ownership as respondents in every country said that if given the choice they would opt for self-employment. While many cited the independence it would offer, others indicated they were drawn to entrepreneurship out of economic necessity, not opportunity. Current economic conditions and a move towards the private sector and business ownership point to the growth of the entrepreneurship sector across the region.

Growing awareness of entrepreneurial sector: With increasing interest in social entrepreneurship, the study evaluated the level of familiarity with entrepreneurship—in both the business and social sense—as the term is often perceived as an import from the West. Survey results concluded that overall there was a general level of familiarity with the term, but more respondents identified with the business side of entrepreneurship, indicating that there is more work to do to build awareness around the social sector. More encouraging was the number of respondents—63% in Tunisia and 56% in Egypt—who expressed an interest in starting their own business and a general openness towards working in the field of social entrepreneurship.

Challenges facing the sector: While survey results revealed several opportunities, there remains a high rate of failure for new businesses and NGOs, preventing them from reaching maturity. In Egypt 44% of business owners stated that their current businesses were not performing well, and in Syria the figures were higher at 50%. Those operating NGOs did not fare much better, as 56% of respondents in Egypt said that they had hoped to start an organization but were unable to do so. Government interference, the inability to obtain finance, bureaucratic hurdles, fear of failure, and corruption were the major obstacles to starting a new enterprise.Government interference, the inability to obtain finance, bureaucratic hurdles, fear of failure, and corruption were the major obstacles to starting a new enterprise. With transitions underway in Arab Spring countries, Stanford researchers called for a number of policy recommendations to create an ecosystem conducive for entrepreneurship to thrive. Some of their suggestions include: legal and regulatory reform in the banking sector; introducing entrepreneurial education in schools; and increasing the number of high-tech incubators.

While the Arab Spring has had an immediate negative impact on the economic landscape in the Arab world, the positive effect on citizens’ interest in social and economic development remains strong. As Arab Spring countries attempt to rebuild economically, social entrepreneurship represents a promising pathway for the post-revolutionary generation to engage in positive social change in the region and beyond. 

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce a joint venture with the Brookings Doha Center (BDC) to examine democratic transitions underway in the Arab world. The BDC-Stanford “Project on Arab Transitions” will engage both Arab and Western scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to generate comprehensive analysis and offer recommendations to help inform policymaking and development assistance in both the Arab world and the broader international community. The collaboration was born out of the need to generate cross-regional scholarship and address the ongoing transitions in a more systematic manner.

“This partnership brings together the complementary strengths of two great institutions to generate original scholarship that unites the scholarly and policy worlds during a critical period of transition underway in the Arab world," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "We are hopeful that it will provide guidance to the international community and Arab governments as they work to build democratic institutions in post-revolutionary societies."

The BDC-Stanford scholarly collaboration seeks to provide concrete and practical recommendations to Arab governments and the international policy community. The series of policy papers produced will analyze and illuminate the key issues facing the transition period, including electoral design, constitution-drafting, political party development, and national dialogue processes.

“We are excited to be working with a top university like Stanford University to produce cutting-edge research on the critical issues facing transitional countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya,” said Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center. “This will be a vital addition to the literature surrounding these transitions and policymakers’ understanding of them.”

The first paper in the BDC-Stanford Project on Arab Transitions series released today is authored Dr. Tamir Moustafa of Simon Fraser University in Canada and author of The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt. Using Egypt as a case study, Moustafa highlights the deficiencies of the constitution-writing process to serve as an example to other Arab countries as they embark on their own national projects. In addition, Moustafa offers key recommendations to the international community, as well as to Egypt’s Constituent Assembly on the various statutes, provisions, and conditions that should be included in the document to ensure that human rights protections, judicial independence, and institutions of governance are enforced.

A forthcoming paper in the series will be authored by Ellen Lust from Yale University on the topic of electoral processes during democratic transition, drawing on recent experiences in Egypt and Tunisia.

For more information on The Project on Arab Transitions and the BDC-Stanford collaboration, please click here. 

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Since the Taif agreement of 1989, which helped end the civil war, half of Parliament has been reserved for Christians, the other half for Muslims, with each half distributed among 11 of Lebanon’s 18 officially recognized sects (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Alawite, etc). Each of Parliament’s (pdf) 128 seats is sect-specific: only members of that sect can run for it. (Voters, however, can cast their ballot for every seat in their district regardless of their own religious affiliation.) The president must be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Hundreds of bureaucratic appointments are also subject to sectarian apportionment under the Constitution.

The imposition of religious representativeness in politics is a scourge. In the best of circumstances, it is vulnerable to the demagoguery of religious leaders; in the worst, it breeds civil violence and paralyzes the government. But others fear that a more open system would not provide the guarantees of power-sharing among religious minorities that the current model entails.

In recent months, the focus of these long-standing divergences has centered on the intricacies of Lebanon’s electoral law. The next parliamentary elections are less than a year and a half away, and a loose coalition of civil society groups, independent politicians and Lebanon’s president – the former army general Michel Suleiman — has recently proposed implementing a system of proportional representation to replace the current majoritarian, or “winner-take-all,” model.

Under the existing system, a fledgling party with a small but dedicated following stands no chance of getting its candidates elected in a district where a more established party holds sway. Under proportional representation — in which seats are allocated in keeping with the share of votes collected — a small party could win some seats with a minority of votes. In addition to ensuring multiparty representation in each district, proportional representation would empower lesser-known independent candidates. Over time the newcomers could coalesce to form a bulwark against the traditional political mainstream and advance a more liberal agenda.

Predictably, most major parties have conspired to protect the status quo; they want to maintain their primacy within it. The Future Movement, the main Sunni party, worries that the Sunni allies of its Shiite archrival, Hezbollah, might encroach on its turf. Walid Jumblatt, the country’s main Druze leader, fears that he would lose votes to other Druze figures with small-time followings in his traditional stronghold, the Chouf mountains.

In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Lebanon’s main Christian parties have come together to oppose the president’s draft law. The proposed law would combine Lebanon’s small electoral districts into fewer and larger ones, which is necessary for proportional representation to work effectively. (Imagine an election between 10 different parties in a 10-seat district: if each party wins 10 percent of the overall vote, each one gets its own seat. In a two-seat district, only the top two lists win seats.) But an electoral map with  larger districts also means  larger constituencies, which in turn means that substantial numbers of Christian candidates could be voted in on the lists of non-Christian parties (like the Future Movement and Hezbollah). And that would erode the influence of the traditional Christian political elite.

And so the Christian political establishment has offered a radical counter-proposal: a law that would institute proportional representation but also require citizens to vote only for members of their own sect (Sunnis would elect Sunnis; Greek Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, etc.)

One of the many problems with this idea is that it would generate considerable inequalities of suffrage between Christians and Muslims. As is, Christians already have greater voting power than Muslims because they still occupy half of Parliament even though they now represent less than half of Lebanon’s population. Under the new proposal, this disparity in representation would be further exacerbated.

Worse is the vision of Lebanon’s political future at the heart of the Christian plan. The president’s proposal envisages a country whose citizens vote for candidates on the basis of party affiliation and political platform, not sect. The Christians’ counter-proposal imagines Lebanon as a collection of 18 insular religious communities jealously nominating their own nobility and eyeing one another with suspicion. The first model is a bold step toward dismantling political sectarianism; the second is an enormous step backward, toward greater divisiveness.

Because of its inexpediency, a substantive revision of the electoral law in time for the 2013 elections seems unlikely — despite the fact that a solid majority of Lebanese say they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Yet if Lebanon is ever to establish a new social contract — one based on true citizenship rather than begrudging coexistence — it will need to change its electoral arithmetic.

A year has passed since the Egyptian uprising, one of the defining moments of the democratic wave that surged across the Arab world. Since Jan. 25, 2011, three long-standing Arab dictatorships have toppled and citizen movements continue to challenge entrenched autocratic regimes. Reflecting on this pivotal moment, five scholars at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law talk about how these events changed the course of democracy – if at all – and what they mean for the region as a whole.

What are the prospects for democracy in the Arab world today?

Larry Diamond: The near-term prospects for democracy are mixed and uncertain – but far better than they were a year ago. Within the space of a single year, Tunisia has become an electoral democracy – the first in the Arab world since Lebanon fell apart in the mid-1970s. This is an astonishing achievement, and Tunisia’s prospects to build democracy are quite good. Egypt has a chance to turn the corner politically, but it depends on whether the Muslim Brotherhood will evolve in a truly democratic and tolerant direction, and whether the military will step back from power. Libya must still disarm its militias and build democratic institutions and a viable state. Syria and Yemen remain much more deeply troubled, with a risk of civil war.

In examining the arc of history, was the Arab Spring inevitable? Should we have been surprised by what happened?

Francis Fukuyama: Economic growth and technological change foster the rise of a middle class that fosters demands for political participation. This is the social basis for democratic revolutions around the world. Some people argued that cultural factors – Islam, Arab passivity –would prevent this from unfolding in the Middle East, but this has clearly been proven wrong. These structural shifts do not imply inevitability, since it is human agents who must translate social demands into political action. This is why the general phenomenon of a revolt may have been predictable, but the timing absolutely uncertain.

Have living conditions improved in the Arab world, or are they worse for the average citizen?

Lina Khatib: The Arab Spring has brought immense change in the lives of Arab citizens. Political taboos have been broken, and the wall of fear that used to govern their everyday lives has crashed down. The Arab world still has some way to go before it can be called democratic in the full sense. While the economy in particular has taken a hit in the current period of transition and uncertainty – making conditions worse for many in the short term – the average Arab citizen today can actually look forward to seeing freedom of expression, human rights, and political and economic reform. These are no longer unrealizable dreams.

What are some of the lessons U.S. policymakers have learned from the Arab Spring?

Jeremy M. Weinstein: A number of fundamental ideas that underpinned 30 years of U.S. policy in the Middle East were upended by the events of 2011. The idea that Arabs do not care about democracy, are politically apathetic, and are too frightened to resist oppressive regimes has been disproved. The notion of authoritarian stability is now questioned, and it is no longer taken for granted that “the autocrats we know” are the safest bet to secure U.S. interests. And the fear of Islamists is slowly receding among policymakers as they confront the electoral success of Islamist parties and begin to directly engage a new cadre of leaders.

How did Arab monarchies weather the storm and avoid the experiences of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia?

Ahmed Benchemsi: Except in Bahrain, where security forces opened fire on unarmed crowds, Arab monarchies generally managed to outflank their respective protesters in a peaceful way. They did so either by implementing illusory reforms while in fact playing for time (in Morocco and Jordan) or by buying off the opposition with huge social spending (in the Gulf). As this last tactic may remain effective for some time, non-oil monarchies’ victories are more likely to prove short-lived. New rounds of popular anger could be spawned sooner rather than later by, if anything, growing economic difficulties. These will be harder to quell by subterfuges.

Looking forward, are you hopeful that democracy will prosper in the Arab world?

Diamond: Yes, I am quite hopeful that democracy will develop in the Arab world, but I think there will be wide variation among Arab countries in the near term, and much will depend on whether there emerges an instance of clear democratic success that inspires other countries. This is why I think we should bet heavily now on Tunisia, while also intensively engaging Egypt, the largest Arab country.

Fukuyama: In the long run yes, in the short run, no – a safe answer.

Khatib: Even if democracy takes decades to materialize, the Arab world has finally taken the first steps in what – as history has taught us – is always a long and difficult journey, and that’s an important milestone.

Weinstein: All of us know that the road to democracy is uncertain and filled with obstacles. But I take comfort in the fact that no one could have predicted a 2011 in which Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gadhafi, and Saleh would leave the stage. Something profound has changed in the region, and I am confident that – having lost their fear – citizens will make their voices heard as the struggle for democracy continues.

Benchemsi: For democracy to have a real chance in the Arab World, liberals must build grassroots organizations – ones that would be large and strong enough to challenge both autocratic regimes and Islamist groups. When this is done, I will have reason for optimism.