The 14 January Revolution of the young Tunisians has surprised nearly all scholars and analysts of Arab political culture. This first democratic and peaceful revolution in the history of the Arab world, overthrew, with incredible speed, one of the most efficient dictators in the region. This unprecedented and unique revolution is also transforming Tunisia in ways unimagined a short while ago. The Tunisian Revolution has also inspired other democratic uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, leaving analysts wondering who is next in line for a regime change. Tunisians are now enjoying freedoms their Arab neighbors in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco, can only admire from afar. All Tunisian political prisoners have been released, dozens of political parties and movements have gained legal status, including the outlawed Islamist Nahdha Movement, Censorship of the media has been lifted, and a transitional temporary government has been established. Three commissions are working assiduously to reform the political system, investigate corruption and illegal acquisition of wealth by the former dictator and his entourage, and inquire about the excesses committed by the regime against young Tunisians during the protests. One of the main tasks of the transitional temporary government is to prepare the country for its first free and democratic general elections, which will take place six months from the day of Revolution. During Summer 2011, Tunisia’s political parties will participate, for the first time in the History of the country and the Arab world, in free and democratic general elections. After enduring marginalization and harassment for 23 years under Ben Ali's oppressive dictatorship, these political parties have no experience organizing or competing in an open and free electoral process. Therefore, scholars and political analysts are wondering whether the upcoming general elections in Tunisia will fulfill the hopes and demands of the young Tunisians, who brought about this revolution, or if the elections will be disrupted by recalcitrant forces from the old regime. This paper is based on data collected from Tunisian primary sources in Arabic and French, as well as social networks. It will also include data gathered in the field, including personal interviews and discussions with members of the Commission of Political Reform. The goal of this paper is to assess the effects the new electoral laws and constitutional reforms on the political dynamics and organizing capabilities of the various political parties and national forces participating in the upcoming democratic elections in Tunisia.

In 2006, Bahrain’s Islamic National Accord Society (Al-Wafeq) participated in parliamentary elections and won 17 of the 18 seats it contested. Likewise in the 2006 Kuwaiti elections, the Sunni Islamist bloc, including members of the Islamic Constitutional Movement (Hadas), achieved unprecedented electoral success. While the debate over Islamists and their commitments to democracy is on going, these performances are by no means exceptions: moderate Islamists do participate in electoral politics and they win. According to Shadi Hamid, “political Islam is the single most active political force in the Middle East today.”1 This paper examines the role of Islamist social and political movements in participatory politics in Kuwait and Bahrain. Specifically, it deals with the puzzle of why Islamists achieve electoral success under these authoritarian regimes. Much of the prevailing literature focuses on the gains that Islamists can win through the provision of social services, which may highlight the relative inadequacy of state social welfare provision compared to Islamist providers and delegitimize the state. This Marxist perspective is too simplistic and disproportionally weights economic grievances in explanations of Islamist electoral success. The case selection of Kuwait and Bahrain seeks to lessen the potential analytic leverage of Islamist social welfare provision because of the extensive, generous provision of social services and government jobs by the state. Furthermore, both states have experimented with increased political pluralism and elections over the last decade (Bahrain) or two (Kuwait). Arguably, Kuwait and Bahrain have some of the most robust democratic institutions in the Arab Middle East. Applying social movement theory to analyze the evolution, campaigns, electoral results, and actions once in parliament of Hadas and Al-Wafeq, this paper demonstrates that these movements win votes from wide range of supporters and strategically modify and moderate their positions as necessary to mobilize and achieve electoral success. More broadly, it seeks to identify some of the key causal mechanisms of successful mobilization, which translate to increased votes for Islamists. 1 Hamid, Shadi, and Amanda Kadlec. "Strategies for Engaging Political Islam.” Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). 26 Feb 2009.

Following Kuwait’s 2009 elections, several newly elected politicians expressed their commitment to work constructively with the government in order to break the political deadlock of the three previous years. Even though the government has not seen a stable majority supporting it in all votes, it has been able to gain support in all but one through an ever-changing majority. Yet, over the past few months, government support in the parliament has been declining, while the level of crisis has been increasing, with even the Prime Minister barely surviving a vote of no-confidence. This paper raises the question of what caused this apparent shift in alliances, and investigates the strategies pursued by both government and the opposition in order to gain support for their view. A set of key factors is suggested, identifying those crucial components which may make or break a majority. The starting point of this paper is that Kuwait is not a fully fledged democracy; the Emir is at liberty to dissolve the parliament, the government is appointed and not based on a parliamentary majority, and political parties are forbidden, among other things. These democratic shortcomings are the subject of heated debate in Kuwait, and many oppositional figures frame their work within the context of a struggle for democratization. Yet, there are other important factors at play as well; social tensions along sectarian and geographical lines, members of the royal family positioning themselves on the political stage, MPs concern for re-election, and of course the ever present question of resource allocation in a rentier state. Through in-depth analysis of voting patterns, draft bills and parliamentary debates, combined with qualitative interviews with key actors, this paper seeks to measure the importance of the different factors given above, both alone and combined with each other. By doing so, the aim is to establish the boundaries for constructive cooperation between the government and a parliamentary majority, and not least how, why and by whom these boundaries are crossed. On this basis, we will argue that democratic shortcomings alone do not explain the current shift in the parliament. Rather the lack of democracy works in tandem with the extent to which Kuwaiti politics are driven by a set of shifting and conflicting parochial interests to the detriment of any longterm ideological and political vision. The product is a political environment in which any attempt at strategic planning and development remains highly vulnerable.

Nearly forty years since the publishing of ?erif Mardin’s work on center and periphery in Turkey, it has become a foundational meta-narrative utilized by scholars to interpret a vast array of political behavior in Turkey. This paper argues that it is time to revisit this critical assumption in regard to its usage as the predominant electoral cleavage shaping the party system. In regard to the simplistic electoral cleavage commonly asserted, such a position suffers on theoretical, empirical and logical levels. The theoretical underpinnings of a "center-periphery" divide coming from the work of Shils and that of Lipset and Rokkan illuminate a number of challenges in application to the Turkish case. The “center-periphery” division in both sources, being a product of Modernization Theory, assumes a “pre-modern” culture and anticipates its disappearance with the advent of centralization and democratic suffrage. Furthermore, the complex shifts in voting behavior and sociological research provide empirical evidence that further damages the notion of such an electoral cleavage in both the initial stages of the party system, throughout its history, and in the current context. Electoral data and party composition clearly indicate that the advent of multiparty politics witnessed two “center” parties mobilizing various segments of the "periphery" in different ways, with the victorious party appealing not to cultural but explicitly to material concerns. With the passage of time and employment of new campaign strategies, further shifts in voter behavior among groups in the so-called center and periphery complicate the picture even more. The proposition in studies of recent elections that a perceived clustering of devout voters on the right pitted against less devout voters on the left equates to the maintenance of the center-periphery battle seems to be unaware of a similar division many other long-established democracies, none of which would use such a classification. Finally, the logic of such a classification for the Turkish context is also questioned. To maintain the assertion of a “periphery” whose representative parties have been at the center of social and political power, in some form or another, since 1950 also seems to be a misuse of the terminology. Its persistence in the literature seems to be related more to its usefulness as a discursive device than to its explanative power, and thus, the employment of such essential diachronic cleavages in academic analysis of the Turkish case should be abandoned.

Recent protests in Egypt bring to international attention the puzzling phenomenon of why there are spikes in political activity in the period bookending elections in authoritarian regimes, given the recent Egyptian elections’ lack of fairness. What is more, the publicity that female protestors receive brings to light a second puzzle within the puzzle: What conditions increase the likelihood of women taking part in political actions? This project analyzes factors to explain the general spike in political activity around Egyptian elections and other political openings, in particular among women, who have the potential to pose great challenges to the regime due to qualitatively different ways in which they become politically engaged. While literature on individual resources and group membership gives explanatory power for who engages in political acts on average, it does not explain spikes in activity—especially among women. Using previous literature as a starting point, a theory privileging political opportunity structures and the strategic use of gender in political acts unsanctioned by the state emerges to bring more leverage to the research questions. Because political behavior in authoritarian regimes is explicitly different than the types of behavior that emerge in democratic contexts, a bi-furcated dependent variable of political behavior is established: behavior that is sanctioned by the state as well as that which is unsanctioned (ignored or repressed). The upcoming 2011 election in Egypt has been chosen to test both existing socio-economic and group-level explanations and the author’s theory, which combines gendered ways of approaching politics and political opportunities created by international scrutiny on elections and other political openings in developing countries. The significance of establishing the election as a political opening in advance is that it removes the research from post-hoc rationalization. Two fully funded surveys—a baseline survey to measure political attitudes and behavior in non-election time in the spring of 2011, compared against a survey conducted just before the election—test whether the author’s theoretical explanation for spikes in political activity and women using gender to their advantage offer increased leverage on the puzzles. In order to balance the quantitative methodology of the survey, before and after interviews conducted in 2009, 2010 and 2011 with political participants—as well as those who abstain—provide timely and unique insights with influences on the individual’s decision to participate or abstain.

The Kuwaiti media scene has become very politicized in the past few years with both Government and opposition criticizing newspapers and tv stations of being biased and corrupt. Whereas the Government has threatened to restrict press freedom and temporarily closed down al-Jazeera’s local office, the opposition speaks of “al-?il?m al-f?sid” – the corrupt media - to denounce what it sees as media manipulation from above. In fact, according to a many Kuwaiti observers, the media institutions have been reduced to personal, political projects - or power tools in the hands of those who can afford it. However, the veracity of this claim has not been systematically studied. This paper provides such a study, and argues that while owners’ political orientation does affect content, the prospects for commercial revenues may be just as important. The paper focuses on Kuwaiti newspapers’ coverage of the 2009 parliamentary election campaign, which is particularly interesting because it produced a pro-government parliamentary majority following three years of heavy political turbulence. It departs from the assumption that the government started working for this achievement during the electoral campaign period. The paper builds on qualitative interviews with Kuwaiti media actors and observers in combination with comparative content-analysis of 15 daily Arabic-language newspapers in the month leading up to the parliamentary elections. The content-analysis itself has a qualitative and a quantitative component. The qualitative part is concerned with the language used in the coverage of the various candidates, that is, answering questions such as who are talking to whom and why, what are they saying and why, do they use any particular words and if so, why, what could be their intentions, and so on. The quantitative part looks at features such as how many and how big pictures are used of different candidates, how much space is given in the columns, and how the editorial coverage correlates with the amounts a candidate spends on ads. The results indicate that owners’ interests have a clear influence on Kuwaiti newspapers’ election coverage. But candidates that spend a lot on advertisements are nevertheless able to gain coverage in all camps’ media outlets. We argue that newspapers are not so much the tools of certain individuals as they are the tools of the rich, further questioning the democratic value of Kuwait’s daily press.