To mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of CDDRL, Hicham Alaoui joins ARD to discuss his recently released book, Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Click here to order a copy of the book.

Pacted Democracy in the Middle East provides a new theory for how democracy can materialize in the Middle East, and the broader Muslim world. It shows that one pathway to democratization lays not in resolving important, but often irreconcilable, debates about the role of religion in politics. Rather, it requires that Islamists and their secular opponents focus on the concerns of pragmatic survival—that is, compromise through pacting, rather than battling through difficult philosophical issues about faith. This is the only book-length treatment of this topic, and one that aims to redefine the boundaries of an urgent problem that continues to haunt struggles for democracy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hicham Alaoui is the founder and director of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation, which undertakes innovative social scientific research in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a scholar on the comparative politics of democratization and religion, with a focus on the MENA region.

In the past, he served as a visiting scholar and Consulting Professor at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University.  He more recently served as postdoctoral fellow and research associate at Harvard University. He was also Regents Lecturer at several campuses of the University of California system. Outside of academia, he has worked with the United Nations in various capacities, such as the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. He has also worked with the Carter Center in its overseas missions on conflict resolution and democracy advancement. He has served on the MENA Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch and the Advisory Board of the Carnegie Middle East Center. He served on the board of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and has recently joined the Advisory Board of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, M.A. from Stanford University, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. His latest book is Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, 2022). His memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni, were published in 2014 by Éditions Grasset, and have since been translated into several languages. He is also co-author with Robert Springborg of The Political Economy of Arab Education (Lynne Rienner, 2021), and co-author with the same colleague on the forthcoming volume Security Assistance in the Middle East: Challenges and the Need for Change (Lynne Rienner, 2023). His academic research has been widely published in various French and English journals, magazines, and newspapers of record.

This event is co-sponsored by ARD, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

Today’s headlines are filled with arguments over restrictions on the right to vote and attempts to expand it. But what if we leapt over the current argument, and made a commitment to a ‘100% Democracy’, an election process where every citizen has the right to vote and full opportunities to do so—but also the duty to vote, a requirement to participate in our national choices?

In 100% Democracy:  The Case for Universal Voting, co-authors E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport argue for just that, and it’s not as far out as it sounds at first hearing.  Twenty-six countries around the world require participation in elections including Australia, which has required citizens to cast a ballot since 1924 and had over 90% voter turnout in their last major election. The U.S. on the other hand lags behind other democracies, with only 66.8% of eligible voters participating in the record-turnout election of 2020. If Americans are required to pay taxes and serve on juries, why not ask—or require—every American to vote?

Join us on Tuesday, April 5, for a conversation with Dionne and Rapoport about 100% Democracy, universal voting, and how it might be implemented. Is it time for the United States to take a major leap forward and recognize voting as both a fundamental civil right and a solemn civic duty?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

E.J. Dionne is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, a professor at Georgetown University, and visiting professor at Harvard University. He is the author of Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country.
 

Miles Rapoport is the Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. He formerly served in the Connecticut state legislature and as Connecticut’s secretary of the state. He also served as president of Demos and of Common Cause.

In 2019, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the opposition candidate in Istanbul, defeated the city's ruling party for a second time. The ruling party had governed Istanbul for the previous 25 years and Turkey for 17. This triumph of Turkey’s opposition against President Erdogan’s regime took place in a tilted playing field marked with heavy censorship on media, criminalization of opposition politicians and journalists, and the government’s control of the election authority. Among the forces behind this victory was a successful election campaign.

Necati Özkan, the director of the İmamoğlu Campaign, will explain the background of Istanbul's elections, the opposition’s challenges, and campaign strategies in beating populist authoritarian regimes as Turkey is preparing for its next general elections scheduled in June 2023.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Necati Özkan is the founder and president of ÖYKÜ / Dialogue International (an Istanbul-based independent creative agency) and Reform Institute (an Istanbul-based think tank). He has been managing the marketing campaigns of national and international brands for more than 30 years. He has also served as a political consultant and/or campaign manager for political parties, mayors, candidates, and NGOs. He managed more than 160 local, national, presidential, and international political campaigns in Turkey and around. He won more than 70 awards; including 17 Pollie Awards, 11 Reed Awards, 15 Polaris Awards, 11 Goldie Awards, 2 Adrian Awards, 7 Felis Awards, and several national awards. Mr. Özkan is a former president of EAPC, former chairman of Dialogue International (A Pan-European independent agencies network), and a member of EAPC, AAPC, IAPC, IAA. He teaches "Strategy" at the Brand School of Istanbul Bilgi University. He has 5 books on strategy and campaign management.