A program of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), focusing on Arab World affairs. CDDRL is a research center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy is pleased to announce its second annual conference on May 12-13, 2011.
This conference focuses on empowering political activism in the Arab world, and features scholars and activists discussing the achievements of and challenges facing political activists in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia.
From Political Activism to Democratic Change in the Arab World
Second Annual Conference of the
Program on Arab Reform and Democracy
Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) atStanfordUniversity
May 12-13, 2011
BechtelConferenceCenter,StanfordUniversity
Thursday May 12, 2011
8:30-9:00 Welcome
9:00-9:45 Opening Speech
Activism in the Middle East: A Framework
Ellen Lust,YaleUniversity
9:45-10:15 Break
10:15-12:15 Tunisia and Egypt
Chair: Ellen Lust,YaleUniversity
Toward a Second Republic in Tunisia
Christopher Alexander,DavidsonCollege
Political Activism of Everyday Life: Lessons from the Tunisian Revolution
Nabiha Jerad,Tunisia
Factors Leading to the Egyptian Revolution; Where are We Now?
Ahmed Salah,Egypt
Discussant: Michele Dunne, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
12:15-1:15 Lunch
1:15-3:15 The Gulf
Chair: Larry Diamond,StanfordUniversity
The 2011 Uprising in Bahrain and its Consequences on the Participative Institutions
Laurence Louër, SciencesPo
Activism in Bahrain and the Struggle for Reform
Maryam Al Khawaja,Bahrain Centre for Human Rights
Saudi Arabia: The Impossible Revolution?
Stéphane Lacroix, SciencesPo
Challenges to Realistic Political Reforms in Yemen
Munir Mawari,Yemen
3:15-3:45 Break
3:45-5:15 Syria and Lebanon
Chair: Lina Khatib,StanfordUniversity
Activism and the Orphan Reform in Lebanon.
Ziad Majed,AmericanUniversity ofParis
Syria from Political Activism to Popular Uprising: A Roadmap to Democracy
Radwan Ziadeh,GeorgeWashingtonUniversity
Discussant: Daniel Brumberg,GeorgetownUniversity
Friday May 13, 2011
9:00-10:30 Palestine
Chair: Khalil Barhoum,StanfordUniversity
Pretending Palestine is Normal
Nathan Brown,GeorgeWashingtonUniversity
Palestine: The Non-violent Popular Struggle for Freedom and the Future of Democracy
Mustafa Barghouti, MP,Palestine
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-1:00 Jordan and Morocco
Chair: Hicham Ben Abdallah,StanfordUniversity
A Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan: The Resilience of the Rentier System
Marwan Muasher, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Assessing Current Public Perceptions of Political Activism Development in Jordan
Amer Bani Amer,Al-HayatCenter for Civil Society Development
Morocco: Activist Revival vs. Autocratic Resilience
Ahmed Benchemsi,StanfordUniversity
Discussant: Sean Yom,TempleUniversity
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-4:00 Concluding Roundtable Discussion and Reflections
Chair: Larry Diamond,StanfordUniversity
Bechtel Conference Center
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.
In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe.
Purpose of SSIPI
The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at CDDRL is pleased to announce a one-day conference to be held on Friday April 29, 2011, entitled, "Democratic Transition in Egypt." This event, co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, will focus on Egypt's current revolutionary period, to examine this pivotal moment in Egypt's political history and prospects for future reform. The conference brings to Stanford leading Egypt academics from American, European, and Egyptian universities and think tanks. Panels will examine the background to the revolution, discuss the role of oppositions parties and civil society, and forecast Egypt's political future.
For those who can't make it in person, the conference will be tweeted live from 9:00-5:30 PST on Twitter @StanfordCDDRL, #ARDEG for those interested in following virtually.
Co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.
8:30 Welcome
9:00-10:30 Panel 1: The Popular Revolt against the Mubarak Regime
Chair: Joel Beinin, Stanford University
- The popular movement - Emad Shahin, Notre Dame University
- The response of the regime: the effort of the old order to re-establish itself - Samer Shehata , Georgetown University
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:45 Panel 2: The Process of Regime Transition - Till the Presidential Election and Beyond
Chair: Lina Khatib, Stanford University
- The process of negotiations between the regime and opposition groups; how will things look like till the presidential election? - Joshua Stacher, Kent State University
- Crafting Egyptian democracy: the agenda for constitutional and institutional reform - Tarek Masoud, Harvard University
- Internal security and external pressure: is Egypt becoming less repressive? - Jason Brownlee, University of Texas at Austin
12:45-1:45 Lunch
1:45-3:45 Panel 3: Egypt's Changing Political Party Landscape
Chair: Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University
- Secular opposition paries - Samer Soliman, American University in Cairo
- The Muslim Brotherhood: what next? - Omar Ashour, University of Exeter
- Newcomers and veterans in a changing political arena- Hesham Sallam, Georgetown University
3:45-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30 Panel 4: Looking Forwards
Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University
- Connecting digital activists to power: new approaches to democracy promotion - Ben Rowswell, Stanford University
- The presidential and parliamentary elections - Shadi Hamid, Brookings Doha Center
Bechtel Conference Center
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Encina Hall West, Room 408
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
As in much of the Arab world, 2011 was a year of social upheaval and momentous change for Yemen. Following eleven months of popular protest, and under significant international pressure, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to a UN-backed transition initiative in November 2011. The initiative ensured a transfer of power from Saleh to his deputy, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and mandated a two-year period of national dialogue to resolve long-standing political issues and produce a new constitution before elections are held in 2014.
The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to present the report of this project, which examines the link between economic and political reform in the Arab world. While there is a large number of international organizations implementing reform programs in the region, the way those organizations operate on the ground, how they make their decisions, and deal with local political, economic, and social challenges is generally understudied.
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George-Mason University and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, and is Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal, a peer-reviewed research publication and is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of a critically acclaimed film series on Arabs and Terrorism, based on extensive field research/interviews.
He is the author of The Political Economy of Regime Security: State-Business Networks in Syria (Forthcoming, 2011, Stanford University Press). Bassam recently directed a film on Arab/Muslim immigrants in Europe, titled The "Other" Threat. He also serves on the Editorial Committee of Middle East Report and is Co-Founder of Jadaliyya Ezine.
Did Jordan's general elections, called forth after parliament's dissolution a year earlier, introduce new hope for democratic reform in an increasingly autocratic kingdom? The panel of speakers at this research seminar will address the aftermath of the parliamentary contest of November 2010, assessing broad trends in this critical state following the November elections.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
N/A
Sean Yom finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Government at Harvard University in June 2009, with a dissertation entitled "Iron Fists in Silk Gloves: Building Political Regimes in the Middle East." His primary research explores the origins and durability of authoritarian regimes in this region. His work contends that initial social conflicts driven by strategic Western interventions shaped the social coalitions constructed by autocratic incumbents to consolidate power in the mid-twentieth century--early choices that ultimately shaped the institutional carapaces and political fates of these governments. While at CDDRL, he will revise the dissertation in preparation for book publication, with a focus on expanding the theory to cover other post-colonial regions and states. His other research interests encompass contemporary political reforms in the Arab world, the historical architecture of Persian Gulf security, and US democracy promotion in the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Democracy, Middle East Report, Arab Studies Quarterly, and Arab Studies Journal.
Abbas Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He also holds a Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University since 2005. Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
His recent publications include: "a Case of Partial Cooperation: the 1920 Revolution and Iraqi Sectarian Identities" (forthcoming); "Forging a Third Way: Sistani's Marja‘iyya between Quietism and Wilāyat al-Faqīh, in Iraq, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, edited by Ali Paya and John Esposito, Routledge, July 2010; "Widows' Doomsday: Women and War in the Poetry of Hassan al-Nassar," in Women and War in Muslim Countries, ed. Faegheh Shirazi, Austin: The University of Texas Press, June 2010; "Opting for the Lesser Evil: US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq, 1958-2008," in Bob Looney (ed.) Handbook of US Middle East Relations, London: Routledge, 2009; and Shi`i Perceptions of the Iraq Study Group, Strategic Insights, vol. VI, issue 2 (March 2007).
His book translations include Shi‘a Sects: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes, London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (2007); Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar (Arabic Translation), Köln, Germany: Dar al-Jamal (2006); and Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives, by Anthony Giddens (Arabic Translation), with Dr. Hassan Nadhem, Beirut: (2003).
His current projects include editing the Routledge Handbook of Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge (forthcoming 2011) and finishing a manuscript on The 1920 Revolution and the Making of the Modern Iraqi State (under review).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
