Political transitions in the Arab world

Abstract

The debate on political transitions as applied to the Arab world (see volumes one and two of this series) is ongoing, and the applicability of one or the other of the extant models to this region is a lively one, as the present set of studies demonstrates. Most of the arguments advanced below are based on historical and descriptive data, but theoretical considerations are not absent, in particular those that tend to call into question the universality of democratic transitions while stressing their importance as guides to analysis and even to behavior. It is in this spirit that the authors, in addition to the first chapter dealing with the key political transition in the Arab Mashreq during the late Ottoman period, examine the cases of Egypt, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority