Posted in Daniel Byman, Democracy, Hillel Fradkin, Iran, J. Scott Carpenter, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Martin Kramer, Michael Mandelbaum, Philip Carl Salzman, Raymond Tanter, Walter Laqueur on Jun 17th, 2009 Comments Off on Iranian turmoil, U.S. options
Iran’s June 12 presidential elections have precipitated Iran’s greatest domestic political crisis since the 1979 revolution. The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on ramifications of the turmoil, with special reference to U.S. policy options: Daniel Byman, J. Scott Carpenter, Hillel Fradkin, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Martin Kramer, Walter Laqueur, Michael […]
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Posted in Books, Democracy, Joshua Muravchik on Jun 15th, 2009 Comments Off on ‘The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East’
MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, and a member of MESH. His new is […]
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From J. Scott Carpenter Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting yesterday with a group of young Egyptian activists at the State Department was a welcome and long-overdue development. These young people somehow managed to elicit the words “democracy” and “human rights” in the same sentence from the Secretary, something that until yesterday she had managed […]
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From Michele Dunne I am one of more than 140 scholars and experts to sign a letter to President Obama, released today (March 10), asking him to take seriously his inaugural statement that leaders who “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” are “on the wrong side of history.” The […]
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From Alan Dowty In the week since Israelis went to the polls, the operative word in the media seems to be “inconclusive,” based on the near-tie between the two largest parties and the prospect of bone-wearying bargaining before a government emerges. Both observations are true, but nevertheless the election did register a sharp and significant […]
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Posted in Democracy on Feb 9th, 2009 Comments Off on Middle East seen from Freedom House
From MESH Admin Freedom House has just released its Freedom in the World survey for 2009, rating the level of political rights and civil liberties worldwide. Freedom House divides countries into three categories: free, partly free, and not free. In its “Map of Freedom” (download here), free countries are shown in green; partly free in […]
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Posted in Democracy, Iraq, J. Scott Carpenter on Feb 1st, 2009 Comments Off on Iraqi elections checklist
From J. Scott Carpenter Iraq’s provincial elections took place yesterday without much fanfare and, thankfully, not much violence either. According to news reports, the complexity of the system, the size of the ballot and voter apathy drove voter turnout down. Still, these historic elections, in which 7.5 million Iraqis participated, will set the tone for […]
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