Democracy and Institutions

Kuwait’s opposition notched a major victory in parliamentary elections held on November 26, winning around half of the National Assembly’s 50 elected seats. Though polls were originally scheduled for June 2017, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved the legislature on October 16 after the government was unable to make headway in passing subsidy reforms – even […]

Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century, died on November 25 at the age of 90. Despite Cuba’s small size and the long distance separating it from the Middle East, Castro’s Cuba played an active role in the region in the 1960s and 70s. Claiming to act in promotion […]

BY HAMADA ZAHAWI It was 9:45pm on election night. Still avoiding the news, I boarded my flight back to Boston, after several days of canvassing and protecting the vote with a team of lawyers in a coveted area of a key battleground state – Broward County, Florida. By the time I landed in Boston, Donald […]

Members of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team made headlines when they doubled down on a proposal to reinstate a registry of immigrants and visitors from Muslim countries. While history has shown that blanket discrimination of Americans by race, national origin, or religion is both wrongheaded and ineffective, Trump’s team inadequately cited internment of Japanese Americans during […]

“I’ve never felt anything like it.” So shell-shocked are the students and faculty at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, according to a friend of mine, following the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. Students wept openly the next day as we watched Hillary Clinton’s concession speech and President Obama’s […]

Embed from Getty Images This article was originally published in JMEPP’s Spring 2016 print edition. Abstract Since King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud assumed the Saudi Arabian throne on 23 January 2015, there have been clear continuities in both Saudi domestic and foreign policies to maintain regime security and stability for the ruling elite; however, […]

An unfortunate characteristic of the discourse on Islamism is the muddling of definitions, terminology, historical references, and political positions. It is not uncommon to find criticisms of contemporary Islamist parties rooted in criticisms of premodern Islamic ideas. Even the basic definition of political Islam and “Islamism” is unclear, with no consensus as to what the […]

BY ANDY VO Brynna Quillin has stamina. You can tell by the way the second-year Master in Public Policy student braved New Hampshire cold and rain, organizing hundreds of Harvard students to knock on more than 8,000 doors for Hillary Clinton. By the way she supported her peers after the unexpected election results, with cheerful […]

BY JAMES PAGANO As the dust settles on the 2016 Presidential Election, the Democratic Party will begin a process of deep self-reflection. If the past week is any indication, the party will analyze what happened in 2016 with a specific focus on improving its future electoral prospects among rural white working-class voters. The shocking upset […]

Embed from Getty Images   For Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, enemies are everywhere. His speeches and official comments are littered with references to the hostile elements lurking in Turkey, the so-called “parallel state.” Erdoğan has long used the “parallel state” term to refer to the movement founded in the early 1970s by Turkish Muslim […]

Embed from Getty Images With last week’s election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the anxiety of Arab and Muslim Americans was perhaps the timeliest topic of discussion at the tenth annual Harvard Arab Weekend. In a panel on Saturday, entitled “Arab and Muslim America: Facing Today’s Challenges,” four activists and professors spoke passionately on the […]

BY BOBBIE RAGSDALE Thoroughly unexpected by nearly all on both sides of the aisle, Donald Trump defied the polls Tuesday and proved the existence of a Silent Majority, so often referenced, but whose existence is so often denied. They voted for a multitude of reasons, most of which had little to do with what the […]