October, 2011

Islam and the Role of Elites

By Monica Duffy Toft, Former Associate Professor of Public Policy; Former Board Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Former Director, Initiative on Religion and International Affairs

This policy brief provides background information on how Islam in its various manifestations has developed and spread throughout the world and the role of elites in this evolution. Having emerged in seventh-century Arabia, Muslim communities have formed and thrived across the globe. Indeed today, the majority of Muslims live outside of the Middle East. From the earliest days of Islam, the movement of people and ideas has impacted the institutions of political power in countless regions and modern nation-states. Such changes in religious and political landscapes have occurred partially with the help of decisions by the ruling elites about the desired character of their states. This brief points to a few key reasons why past elites have incorporated Islam into their bids for power and, with that precedent, why today’s religious bids for control more often occur within Muslim societies as elites compete for power.

Spring 2011

Ten Years After September 11

By Katherine Didow and Jinnyn Jacob, Former Belfer IGA Fellow 2010-2011, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

In January 2011, protests started in Tunisia and Egypt, sparking a string of uprisings in the Muslim world, with consequences yet unknown. The Lebanese government collapsed, bringing the Hezbollah-led March 8th coalition to power and to east in Pakistan the popular Governor of Punjab province was assassinated. These monumental shifts caught many politicians, academics, journalists and pollsters by surprise. As world leaders scramble to formulate policy to confront these new realities, there is an urgent need for accurate and relevant public opinion data on the Muslim world.

November, 2011

Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly: Current Politics and Next Steps

The paper is intended for all policy analysts interested in Tunisia, but it could be especially helpful for members of the NCA and the legal advisory committee recently established to advise them on constitutional law and drafting procedure. It explores the different challenges of legitimate procedure the NCA faces in drafting an inclusive constitution during this critical phase in their democratic transition.

September 27, 2011

Mosques as American Institutions: Mosque Attendance, Religiosity and Integration into the Political System among American Muslims

By Karam Dana, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Religious institutions and places of worship have played a pivotal role in American Politics. What about the role of the mosque? Does the mosque, as an institution, in any sense play a different role than that of churches or synagogues in political participation? Some scholars have argued that Islam as a religion and a culture is incompatible with liberal, democratic American values; not only is Islam inconsistent with the West, but it poses a direct conflict.

July, 2011

Should Private Equity In The Middle East And North Africa Be Regulated? The Case Of Egypt

By Ayman Ismail, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Over the five years prior to the financial crisis, global private equity and venture capital investments grew exponentially. Private equity firms and funds are becoming increasingly important actors in emerging markets: they act as a source of financing for new enterprises and as growth capital for existing ones, as owners and managers of portfolio companies, and as employers for both management and labor.

October 31, 2011

"Heartening Signs of Arab Political Change"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative

At rare moments in life, history takes a sharp turn for the better, and sometimes you can see and feel this happening in front of your eyes. This past week was just such a moment for the Arab world, as three different things happened in Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan that probably portend better days ahead for Arab men and women who cherish life in free and equitable societies that leave behind their ugly legacy of the police and security state.

June, 2011

Countering Radicalization in Refugee Camps: How Education Can Help Defeat AQAP

This paper seeks to analyze some of the causes of radicalization and recruitment in refugee/IDP camps, and makes the argument that receiving a well-rounded education, even if it produces mediocre academic results, is the most effective method of counter-radicalization in crisis situations and reduces the space for extremist organizations to recruit and operate.

August 2010

Iranian Youth in Times of Economic Crisis

volume Dubai Initiative Working Paper

By Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Former Associate, The Dubai Initiative

This paper will review the evidence on youth transitions in Iran, using recent survey data to show how the economic crisis since 2008 has affected youth transitions to employment and to marriage.

February 1, 2010

"Arab Society and Men with Guns"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative

AMMAN -- Every time I go to a conference or workshop on civil society and non-governmental organizations in the Arab world, I come away with the same mixed feelings of despondency and pride. I am despondent because decades of work and tens of millions of dollars of local and foreign money that have been spent on strengthening civil society have had very limited impact on the quality of life of ordinary citizens in our region. Civil society institutions continue to be almost totally at the mercy of state power and controls.

January 25, 2010

The Arab Quest for Freedom and Democracy

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative

BEIRUT -- The epic story of the modern Arab world -- largely untold in our societies and unappreciated around the world -- has been the quest by ordinary men and women for reforms that would allow our societies to break the chains of three predominant trends that have plagued us: autocratic political regimes, a seemingly permanent state of post-colonial distortion and dependence, and an inability to tap our human and natural resources to match the Western or Asian developmental bursts that have left us coughing in their dust.

January 6, 2010

Wisdom in Yemen

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative

BEIRUT -- When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared a few days ago that the United Kingdom and the United States would soon convene a special summit on “stabilizing” Yemen in order to reduce the threat of terrorism emanating from there, I cried in my heart for Yemen. My fears were exacerbated when I read the following day that the US’ top military commander in the region had visited Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to offer support, and pledged more financial and military assistance to defeat the growing presence of Al-Qaeda’s operation in the Arabian Peninsula that is domiciled in Yemen.

January 2010

The Politics of International Post-Conflict Interventions

By Husam Zomlot, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

International mobilization for the reconstruction of Gaza began shortly after the end of "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's three-week military offensive from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, which caused unprecedented human loss and physical destruction, and aggravated an already calamitous humanitarian situation. Even before this war, the blockade imposed since June 2007 resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis, as four out of five people in Gaza became dependent on food handouts. As the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza recently commemorated the first year since the start of the latest all-out war, the question that begs an answer is what are the causes of the current reconstruction deadlock?

August, 2010

Addressing the UAE Natural Gas Crisis

By Justin Dargin, Former Associate, The Dubai Initiative

This policy brief explains the origins of the UAE energy crisis, forecasts developments for 2010-2020, and posits recommendations for overall sector rationalization. If Emirati authorities take a proactive stance and address the structural elements of the natural gas shortage, the more extreme elements of the crisis would be mitigated without lasting damage to Emirati economic growth. As the UAE has prodigious natural gas reserves, slight modification of the natural gas pricing and the power sector tariff structures would be able to resolve the most serious issues facing the UAE in its drive towards industrialization and diversification.

November, 2009

Export Control Development in the United Arab Emirates: From Commitments to Compliance

By Bryan Early, Former Research Fellow 2008-2009, The Dubai Initiative

The swiftness with which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched its civil nuclear program presents a number of challenges for policymakers in seeking to ensure the program's safety and security. At the onset of its efforts, the UAE government consulted with a set of the world's leading nuclear suppliers to develop a framework that would help its nuclear program conform to the highest standards in terms of safety, security, and nonproliferation. The UAE drew on these consultations in making a sweeping set of international commitments in April 2008 to ensure that the sensitive nuclear materials and technologies it would acquire as part of its nuclear program would be securely controlled.1 While the UAE has been widely praised for the depth and breadth of the nonproliferation commitments it has made, it will be the UAE's efficacy at complying with them by which its success will be judged.

November, 2009

Strategies for Acquiring Foreign Nuclear Assistance in the Middle East: Lessons from the United Arab Emirates

By Bryan Early, Former Research Fellow 2008-2009, The Dubai Initiative

The path to acquiring a peaceful civilian nuclear program is fraught with challenges for countries in the Middle East. Given Israel's proactive policies in preventing the proliferation of its neighbors and nuclear supplier states' consternation about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, Arab states face  a number of unique obstacles in acquiring foreign nuclear assistance. Yet as the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) recent success in courting the assistance of a number of nuclear supplier states demonstrates, these obstacles are not insurmountable. This piece explores the UAE's strategies in obtaining foreign nuclear assistance to uncover the generalizable insights that may be of use to other Middle Eastern countries seeking to develop peaceful nuclear programs.

November, 2009

Securing the Peace: The Battle over Ethnicity and Energy in Modern Iraq

By Justin Dargin, Former Associate, The Dubai Initiative

This article examines the legal and political impediments to the Kurdish Regional Government's (KRG) exploration and production contracts, which the central government in Baghdad has refused to recognize. The newly established Iraqi national constitution significantly opened as many petroleum-control questions as it resolved. Negotiated in 2005, the constitution not only separated branches of government, but established Federalism as its lodestar. When faced with unresolved issues over regional and national control over petroleum resources, however, International Oil Companies (IOCs) function in an ambiguous legal environment that fails to clearly distinguish between federal and regional powers.

November, 2009

The Ties that Bind: the Dolphin Project and Intra-GCC Relations

By Justin Dargin, Former Associate, The Dubai Initiative

Qatar was the force behind the creation of the Dolphin Project (Dolphin), a much reduced form of the pan-GCC pipeline, envisioned at the November 1989 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit meeting as the most ambitious domestic Middle Eastern gas project ever undertaken. As originally conceived, a transnational pipeline was to weld the national gas grids of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE into a single integrated bloc. Qatar's enormous North Field, the largest associated natural gas field in the world, became the centerpiece of this vision.

November, 2009

The Cross-Border Financial Impact of Violence

By Mohamad M. Al-Ississ, Former Research Fellow 2008-2009, The Dubai Initiative

This paper argues that violent events have two economic effects: a direct loss from the destruction of physical and human capital, and a reallocation of financial and economic resources. It documents the positive cross-border impact that follows violent events as a result of this reallocation. Thus, it reconciles the two existing perspectives in the literature on whether violence has a small or large economic  effect.  Our results show that, in globally integrated markets, the substitution of financial and economic activities away from afflicted countries magnifies their losses. This study evaluates certain factors affecting the impact of violence in non-event countries. Geographic distance from the event country is not monotonic in its effect on the valuation of equities of other countries. Also, the safer a non-event country is perceived to be relative to the event country, the greater the positive impact on its financial market. Finally, event countries with deeper financial markets are less susceptible to capital reallocation following an event.

November, 2009

Oil, Labor Markets, and Economic Diversification in the GCC: An Empirical Assessment

By Tarek Coury, Former Associate 9/2008-12/2011, The Dubai Initiative and Chetan Dave

In a bid to reduce their dependency on oil and natural gas revenues, GCC governments have recently invested considerable resources to diversify their economies.This paper provides an empirical assessment of economic diversification in the GCC for the period 1980-2005. In particular we assess whether oil and natural gas revenues, government policies and foreign flows of labor have contributed to greater economic diversification, proxied by real growth in non-hydrocarbon GDP per worker. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that analyzes economic diversification in the Gulf using panel data techniques that explicitly treat the GCC as an economic block.

We find that lagged hydrocarbon revenue is the only variable consistently associated with subsequent economic diversification; this is in contrast to government expenditures whose impact on diversification is negative, large, and significant. We also find that population growth has little impact on either growth of overall GDP per worker or non-hydrocarbon GDP per worker; we present an economic growth model that takes into account features of the labor market structure in the Gulf to explain this finding. Finally, we present some empirical evidence consistent with claims of greater macroeconomic and financial integration within the GCC.

November, 2009

What Accounts for the Success of Islamist Parties in the Arab World

By Michael Robbins, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Islamist organizations are generally considered to be the strongest and most credible opposition to incumbent regimes throughout the Arab world. Fear of Islamic takeovers has led regimes and other outside powers to justify not holding free elections, citing examples that include the Algerian election of 1991, the Iranian Revolution, the AKP victory in Turkey and the perceived popularity of Islamist opposition groups throughout much of the Arab world (Brumberg 2002). Yet, other analysts have questioned the actual strength of Islamist movements within the Arab world, noting that although Islamists may be the main challenger, few have actually been successful in taking power (Roy 1994).

November, 2009

Private Higher Education in the GCC: Best Practices in Governance, Quality Assurance and Funding, Executive Summary

By Rasmus Bertelsen, Former Research Fellow, Dubai Initiative, 2008–2009; Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy, 2006–2008.

The Gulf region has for the last 15 years seen a vast expansion of private higher education in an effort to increase higher education capacity beyond national systems, develop human resources, and diversify national economies away from oil and gas resources. The examples of classical American- and French-system private universities in Beirut and Cairo and their contribution to human and socioeconomic development are strong reasons for supporting private higher education. However, there are important shortcomings in the governance, quality assurance and funding of especially for-profit higher education, which must be overcome for this sector to positively contribute to development. This policy brief outlines the strengths and weaknesses of private higher education, best practices in governance, quality assurance and funding: non-profit, independence and commitment to academic excellence; the consequences of Western accreditation; and non-profit and endowment-based finance.

November, 2009

Applying For-Profit Principles in Water Management and Agricultural Policy in the Middle East and North Africa

By Mohamad M. Al-Ississ, Former Research Fellow 2008-2009, The Dubai Initiative

Through its partnerships with the government, the agricultural sector in the MENA has long engaged in dubious accounting practices to raise its reported profits through artificially suppressing its costs. This has led to the current unsustainable exploitation of the scarce water resources in the region.

November, 2009

What Accounts for the Success of Islamist Parties in the Arab World

By Michael Robbins, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Islamist organizations are generally considered to be the strongest and most credible opposition to incumbent regimes throughout the Arab world. Fear of Islamic takeovers has led regimes and outside powers to justify the suppression of free elections by citing the Algerian election of 1991, the Iranian Revolution, the AKP victory in Turkey, and the perceived popularity of Islamist opposition groups throughout much of the Arab world (Brumberg 2002). Yet, other analysts have questioned the actual strength of Islamist movements, noting that although Islamists may be the main challengers, few have actually been successful in taking power (Roy 1994).

November, 2009

"An Enhanced Engagement Moving Beyond Security Training for the Palestinian Authority"

By Naseem Khuri, Former Executive Director, The Dubai Initiative

As part of its ongoing campaign to facilitate the development of a Palestinian state, the United States has made strides in empowering security forces within the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). Yet without further training in key areas of diplomacy, governance and public communication, the U.S. cannot adequately address growing concerns of factional strife, increased suspicion of trainee behavior in the West Bank and the perception of excessive American interference in internal Palestinian affairs. Beyond ongoing negotiations with Israel and security training, U.S. policy must address core capacity-building needs within the P.A. in its struggle to govern effectively a future Palestinian state.

January 2008

"Results Based Government in Arab States: Drivers, Barriers and Tensions"

By Nesrine Halima, Former Associate, The Dubai Initiative, 2006-2007

The transnational movement of goods, services and ideas-the
process known as globalization-has had profound impact on national
government structures and how their administrations are managed.
In many respects, globalization has dissolved both material and
immaterial economic, social and even cultural boundaries. The
interplay between both these factors has made globalization an area of
interest and concern within the area of public administration. This policy
brief examines the relationship between globalization and resultsbased
government, and how global processes and trends have affected
the public sector in Arab states. The brief concludes that the variance
between the levels of progress in adopting and applying these tools of
public administration across the Arab world cannot be attributed to lack of political commitment alone, but also resides within the specific institutional and sociocultural histories of Arab states.

November 2006

Will the Oil Boom Solve the Middle East Unemployment Crisis

During the recent oil boom the MENA region has seen job creation accelerate' given favorable economic prospects going forward, the region could see unemployment decline to nearly 7 percent by 2010

May 10, 2008

"Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Policy Choices and Rural Incorporation"

By Haroon Ullah, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

DI Fellow Haroon Ullah recently published a working paper with DSG. Access it in full here.

May 2008

"Labor Regulations and European Industrial Specialization: Evidence from Private Equity Investments"

By Ant Bozkaya, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2009; Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2005–2009; Dubai Initiative, 2007–2008 and William Kerr

European nations empirically substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures like unemployment insurance benefits in the provision of labor market insurance to workers. While perhaps substitutes from a worker's perspective, employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor force adjustments. These labor adjustments are especially important for the portfolio companies of both venture capital and buy-out investors. European nations providing worker insurance through labor market expenditures developed stronger domestic private equity markets over the 1990-2004 period than those nations favoring employment protection. These patterns are further evident in US-sourced private equity investments into Europe. Moreover, tests for industry specialization suggest that countries with more flexible labor markets tend to specialize in sectors characterized by high labor volatility. These results are relevant to the literature examining the impact of labor market regulations on entrepreneurship and productivity growth due to reallocation across firms and sectors.

Click here for the full text.

AP Photo

April 2008

"Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam's Global Gathering"

By Asim Khwaja, Faculty Affiliate, Middle East Initiative, David Clingingsmith and Michael Kremer

This working paper, co-authored by DI Faculty Affiliate Asim Khwaja, argues that the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca increases observance of global Islamic practices while decreasing participation in localized practices and beliefs. The authors' evidence suggests that these changes are more a result of exposure to and interaction with Hajjis from around the world, rather than religious instruction or a changed social role of pilgrims upon return.

Down the full text for free here.

May 2007

Political Islam in Egypt

By Emad Shahin, Former Faculty Affiliate, The Dubai Initiative

The landscape of political Islam in Egypt has changed dramatically over the past decade and a half. Since the mid-1990s, the country's mainstream Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB, or Muslim Brothers), has undergone a significant transformation; an Islamist centrist party, Hizb al-Wasat, has emerged and for the past ten years has been struggling to acquire official recognition; and the country's radical movements, especially the Jama`a Islamiya, have reassessed some of their tactics.

February 2005

"Political Islam: Ready for Engagement?"

By Emad Shahin, Former Faculty Affiliate, The Dubai Initiative

This paper explores the possibilities and implications of a European engagement with moderate Islamists on democracy promotion in the region. It argues that the EU approach to political reform in the Middle East region needs to be enhanced and linked to realities on the ground. Political reform cannot be effective without the integration of non-violent Islamic groups in a gradual, multifaceted process.