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Interviews were held with the researchers who prepared and published the study in the British Journal of Political Science titled “Legislative Cooptation In Authoritarian Regimes: Policy Cooperation in the Kuwait National Assembly.” In Kuwait, political alliances do not always begin under the dome of Abdullah Al-Salem Hall, nor are they decided solely through public speeches or ideological positions. Often, such agreements are shaped before voting sessions, within a complex network of political arrangements, economic calculations, and the balancing of relations between the government and parliament. This conclusion is drawn from a recent American academic study, which argues that the relationship between the government and the National Assembly in Kuwait cannot be interpreted solely through the lens of “loyalty and opposition,” but rather as an ongoing process of political negotiation. In this process, economic incentives, ministerial representation, and mechanisms of political cooptation are used to build parliamentary support.

في الكويت، لا تبدأ التحالفات السياسية دائماً تحت قُبَّة عبدالله السالم، ولا تُحسم عبر الخطابات العلنية أو المواقف الأيديولوجية فقط، بل كثيراً ما تُصاغ قبل جلسات التصويت، داخل شبكة معقدة من التفاهمات السياسية والحسابات الاقتصادية وإدارة التوازنات بين الحكومة والنواب. هذه الخلاصة تطرحها دراسة أكاديمية أميركية حديثة، ترى أن العلاقة بين الحكومة ومجلس الأمة في الكويت لا يمكن قراءتها من زاوية "موالاة ومعارضة" فقط، بل بوصفها عملية تفاوض سياسي مستمرة، تُستخدم فيها الحوافز الاقتصادية والتمثيل الوزاري وأدوات الاستيعاب السياسي لبناء الدعم داخل البرلمان.

This roundtable brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to further contextualize Iran’s foreign policy before and after the so-called “12-day war,” launched by Israel against Iran in June 2025 with direct military support from the US. In many ways, the 12-day war has been decades in the making. Since the 1990s, Israeli leaders and their allies in Washington have repeatedly called for military strikes against Iran, accusing the Islamic Republic of secretly developing nuclear weapons that they would use to annihilate Israel – accusations not only denied by Iran’s leaders but also undermined by U.S. intelligence assessments. While ending and/or delaying Iran’s nuclear program was the explicit reason Israeli leaders gave for attacking Iran in June 2025, they quickly expanded their charges against their regional enemy, pointing to the Islamic Republic’s support for its armed regional allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen – the members of the “Axis of Resistance” – and their domestic oppression of the Iranian people as further justifications for such strikes. In response, Iran retaliated by sending long-range ballistic missiles against Tel Aviv and other cities across Israel over the next week. After the U.S. dropped several 30,000 pound “bunker busting” bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, Trump declared an end to the war and forced a ceasefire between the two regional enemies. Pundits and policymakers in Washington and Tel Aviv alike were quick to claim victory, even as they failed to achieve their stated (or even unstated) objectives.

Elections are the sine qua non of democracy. Yet some form of electoral competition exists in nearly all the world's authoritarian regimes. Levels of competition vary, but this variation belies a persistent reality: incumbents rarely lose. Existing research reflects the seeming hopelessness of elections held in authoritarian regimes, as scholars "generally view the establishment of elections as a means by which dictators hold onto power" (Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009, 404). Several canonical studies of what are referred to as "authoritarian elections" have uncovered the mechanisms linking elections to the stability of authoritarian rule. My research challenges this conventional wisdom by showing that elections can generate the very oppositional forces they are designed to control. Though elections in authoritarian regimes rarely trigger the kind of party or elite turnover required of democratic consolidation (Huntington 1991), this does not necessarily imply that elections cannot generate other processes that may destabilize authoritarian rule, such as political liberalization and large-scale collective action (Howard and Roessler 2006; Beaulieu 2014). Oppositions are key actors in theories of authoritarian politics that describe how dictators use elections to coopt and coerce rival elites and social groups (Zartman 1988, 78). Paradoxically, this presentation reifies the very illusion of democratic governance that sustains authoritarian rule (Albrecht 2010). However, there is ample evidence of elections catalyzing ruptures to this illusion (Bunce and Wolchik 2010), including recently in Armenia, Belarus, and Malaysia. Taken together, these findings indicate that the ontological status of opposition in authoritarian contexts is contested.

On November 28, 2011, Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah resigned as prime minister of Kuwait. This was unprecedented: never before had a prime minister resigned before going on to become Emir. The resignation followed a series of political crises caused by allegations of corruption and bribery. These crises were punctuated by protests that grew in size and frequency throughout 2011. Ultimately, these protests coalesced into what became known as Irhal: a movement dedicated singularly to the resignation of Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad. This case study places Irhal ("Leave") in historical context, analyzes key features of the movement, and assesses the reasons for the movement's success.

On July 17, 2006, the Kuwait National Assembly (KNA) approved a series of amendments to the country's longstanding electoral law. The new electoral law settled a nearly seven-month debate over various proposals, resulting in a change from 25 to five electoral districts. A broad spectrum of reform-oriented associations and legislators had long criticized Kuwait's electoral system and the inequality and clientelism it encouraged. Ultimately, a civil movement born from these efforts translated these disparate calls for reform into a coherent message: Nabiha Khamsa. This case study places Nabiha Khamsa ("We Want Five") in historical context, analyzes key features of the movement, and assesses the intended and unintended consequences of reform in a contemporary electoral authoritarian regime.

On Saturday, Kuwait held its first National Assembly election since the September ascension of Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah as emir. Historically, Kuwait has held the freest and most competitive elections among the Arab Gulf States. Despite concerns that the pandemic would deter voters from participating in the election, nearly 70 percent of citizens participated. Analysts were surprised that 24 out of 43 incumbents lost their seats, though this figure is consistent with previous elections and incumbent reelection and electoral volatility in other non-democracies. Overall, 326 candidates ran for 50 seats across five districts. Public gatherings were prohibited because of the pandemic, though many candidates appeared to ignore these restrictions. Many candidates called for a range of policy changes, such as public sector reform, an electoral law amendment and an end to corruption. Since 2019, several graft scandals implicating a variety of government officials have led to a noticeable rise in public frustration with both the government and parliament. New faces raise the possibility that the next parliament will take action. But these elections will not fundamentally change Kuwait's political landscape. Here's what you need to know about the election — and why the balance of power between the government and parliament is unlikely to change.

Polls in Iran, when conducted with sound methods, can inform us about a post-revolutionary state with semi-competitive elections and a rapidly changing society. Even government-backed organizations in Iran conduct surveys and relay the findings. The Iranian Student Polling Agency (ISPA), a polling organization founded in 2001 under a state academic supervisory body, the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, predicted the outcome of the July 2017 presidential election in Iran within two percentage points of the declared vote returns. The same prediction was also made by an independent polling firm in the days prior to the election. Yet many social scientists who study Iran have been unaware of, or reluctant to use, survey methods, partly due to government limitations imposed on polling organizations in the past. Understandably, many Iranians tend to distrust survey data as well. Or, perhaps more accurately, they tend to distrust survey data unless they see a result which confirms their prior beliefs. Persian-language social media across the political spectrum is peppered with reports of highly-skewed polls, often conducted online with convenience samples, without much discussion of validity or reliability.

This policy brief explores how — despite widespread citizen frustration — the status quo prevailed. The brief will subject the above paradoxes to greater empirical scrutiny, with particular attention to the performance of new actors. It draws findings from an analysis of election results, participant observation of the campaign period, and focus group interviews conducted before and after the election. This brief also analyses how citizen perceptions of the new electoral law, the entrance of civil society lists and movements, party resource advantages, and extra-legal modes of manipulation contributed to the reproduction of Lebanon's electoral status quo.

Analyses of Kuwaiti politics are replete with references to "the opposition." Impressionistic accounts — from journalists, think tanks, and social scientists — often refer to the opposition as a coherent, publicly known group of elites known for their politicking in the National Assembly (Majles al-Umma) or for their activism outside formal state institutions. During election campaigns, this tendency to label candidates as members of "the opposition" intensifies as candidates criticize the government in an effort to signal their independence and mobilize voters. The reality of Kuwaiti politics, however, belies these distortions. Since 2012, the presence of opposition in the Majles al-Umma has diminished, largely due to an Emiri decree that amended Kuwait's election law. This brief analyzes how the new law has limited the opposition's ability to succeed in light of changes to the dynamics of electoral contestation after the Arab Spring.

In an effort to capture citizen behavior and attitudes towards presidential and parliamentary elections, political mobilization by candidate campaigns, and access to various news media, the Iran Social Survey (ISS) surveyed a nationally-representative sample of 5,000 Iranian residents after the 2016 Majles (parliamentary) and Assembly of Experts elections. ISS interviewers also asked respondents about civil society participation, household usage of state social services, self-identification across ethnic or language groups, and family demographics including parents and grandparents' occupational histories. This brief highlights election-related findings relevant for understanding how citizens engage with the political process in Iran. We find low levels of identification with national-level political factions, considerable heterogeneity in citizen preferences for presidential and parliamentary candidates, and divergence in where citizens receive information about politics. We also find large differences in how candidates contact voters before election day. Additionally, individual-level data is made available on nationally-representative voting patterns based on socioeconomic status, age, gender, and education.

The fourth wave of the Arab Barometer was conducted from April 15–23, nearly five years after the Arab uprisings. Three years after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2013, Egypt's political and economic situation remains bleak. Since the coup, levels of repression in Egypt have surpassed those seen even before the 2011 uprisings. According to a number of estimates, as many as 40,000 political dissidents have been detained since 2013. The regime has forcibly disappeared citizens with impunity, released execution orders for senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and used sexual violence against prisoners. Recently, President el-Sisi signed a controversial NGO law passed by Parliament that allows the government to monitor organizational access to foreign funding and limit the delivery of social services. Mismanagement of several other political crises has begun undermining the government's popularity.

The U.S. provides Egypt with roughly $1.3 billion in security assistance annually, primarily in the form of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants. Since 2011, U.S. security assistance has come under increasing criticism. This paper analyzes U.S.-Egypt security cooperation in light of post-2011 developments. Following an overview of U.S. assistance, subsequent sections analyze the legal framework and relevant legislation, particularly in light of the July 2013 removal of President Morsi from office. Subsequently, an analysis of military training and legislative conditionality is presented, with a view towards opportunities for reform. Concluding the paper, several policy recommendations are made for U.S. policymakers to more meaningfully support the development of balanced civil military relations in Egypt and prioritize respect for human rights and the rule of law.

Tunisia's Independent High Authority for Elections faced a formidable task in May 2011. The newly created commission had five months to organize and implement elections for a National Constituent Assembly that would rewrite the Tunisian constitution. Commissioners moved quickly to build capacity and restore public faith in elections. The commission navigated the pressures of a compressed electoral calendar, an agitated electorate, and skepticism of the transitional government. The story of the group's efforts to manage a successful election offers insight into how an electoral commission can take advantage of relationships with political parties, government, and the public to overcome inexperience in volatile circumstances. This case study focuses on commission staffing and recruitment, the creation of regional subsidiary bodies, and voter registration.

This fall, Tunisians mark the end of a three-year political transition with parliamentary and presidential elections, which kick off next week. These elections are crucial for consolidating the important and historic progress achieved in the past year, including the writing of the Arab world’s most democratic constitution. Many underlying issues that threatened to derail Tunisia’s transition – from economic stagnation to security concerns to political animus – remain. Beginning next week, Tunisians will take to the ballot box to determine who will be entrusted to tackle these challenges and lead the country during its next phase. This guide features an overview of the electoral processes, parties running in the legislative elections, leading candidates for president, and major concerns facing the elections.

Effective policy writing is an essential skill for individuals and organizations aiming to influence decision-makers and add value to policy debates. In general, policy writing refers to the process by which government employees and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) create written documents (“policy products”) for lawmakers and policy professionals to read and act upon. The core element of policy writing is the problem-solution relationship: identifying a problem, making a thorough and convincing argument in favor of a specific solution, and persuading the target audience to make decisions in line with those arguments. A typical policy product written for a policymaker introduces a timely policy problem, presents potential solutions to it, evaluates those solutions, recommends one or more of them, and ends with a convincing argument as to why. This guide is intended to assist in brainstorming, researching, and writing effective, persuasive policy products. The first half of the guide addresses the research process, namely: selecting a policy problem, identifying your audience, research design, assembling evidence, and evaluating alternative options. The second half focuses on the writing and production process: crafting policy arguments and recommendations, the structure of policy briefs, the editing process, and the dissemination of policy products.

On June 14, Iranians will vote in a presidential election to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose term ends in August. The election is being held in the shadow of 2009’s contested vote, which prompted massive protests and a subsequent government crackdown that resulted in the arrest, detention, and torture of thousands. Many Iranians are understandably disillusioned, believing the June election to be nothing more than a means by which the Iranian government can reassert its legitimacy and deepen the allegiance of its citizens to the system. Despite these concerns, the election process presents a unique window into the internal debates and disagreements gripping the Islamic Republic. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the twelve-person Guardian Council acting under his authority, retains extensive control over the electoral process. It is generally believed that the outcome will be predetermined through vetting, fraud, or both. In 2009, the Supreme Leader’s decision to endorse Ahmadinejad before the Guardian Council had certified the results both violated the election law and undermined faith in the Supreme Leader’s historic role as a neutral arbiter. Factional infighting and elite rivalries have worsened, and the political battles that have typically characterized these rivalries are now being waged publicly—a development that is dramatically affecting the pre-election environment.

“We will need to help countries like Yemen,” President Obama said during his State of the Union Address in January, “provide for their own security, and help allies who take the fight to terrorists.” Despite the administration’s rhetorical support for “building partner capacity,” counterterrorism policy has become increasingly reliant on targeted strikes by US forces to combat terrorists in Yemen which has generated popular resentment.

The architects of Egypt’s transition and those responsible for drafting the Constitution have given little thought to the future of the country’s electoral law – a critical component of sustainable democracy. That’s because seemingly bigger issues have come to dominate the attention of decision-makers in recent months: curbing institutional interests, checking the power of the military, and holding a broader debate on the role of religion in politics. Debate over these issues has come at the expense of discussing inclusive laws regulating elections and the legitimate transfer of political power.

The architects of Egypt’s transition and those responsible for drafting the constitution have given little thought to the future of the country’s electoral law—a critical component of sustainable democracy. Seemingly bigger issues have come to dominate the attention of decision makers in recent months: curbing institutional interests, checking the power of the military, and holding a broader debate on the role of religion in politics. Debate over these issues has come at the expense of discussing inclusive laws regulating elections and the legitimate transfer of political power.

Earlier this afternoon, the Administrative Court postponed judgment on a recusal request made by Muslim Brotherhood lawyers in a case considering the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The postponement, which will now be heard on September 24, could significantly alter the trajectory of Egypt’s transition. After the first Assembly was dissolved in April, many thought the new Assembly would suffer a similar fate.

On February 13, 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced its intent to lead a pluralistic, consensus-driven democratic transition following the popular revolution that ousted President Mubarak. By summer, the SCAF called for elections and decided on a mixed-parallel electoral system, much to the dissatisfaction of Egyptian political parties. While the elections were free and fair, the results did not conform to the SCAF’s goal of creating a consensus-driven, pluralistic Assembly. Despite these complications, in March 2012, the SCAF convened a joint session of Parliament for the purpose of convening a Constituent Assembly focused on the drafting of a constitution. Given these developments, as members of the Constituent Assembly meet, they will begin discussing the future of the electoral system. The attached report develops a set of evaluative criteria to measure electoral system performance against the SCAF’s stated goals of consensus and pluralism; measures these criteria against the 2011-2012 People’s Assembly elections; and provides policy options for the Constituent Assembly, Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, and other electoral system reform stakeholders.

This policy brief analyzes Egypt’s electoral framework in light of legal and political changes following the popular revolt that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Over the course of a three and a half month period, Egyptians will elect representatives to lower and upper houses of Parliament: the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council, respectively. Once both houses convene in March 2012, a 100-member constituent assembly will be selected to draft a new constitution.

Shortly after news broke of an alleged, failed “Iranian” plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., policymakers began campaigning for tough action against the Iranian government. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called on President Obama to “hold Iran’s feet to the fire,” and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) urged the president to “respond forcefully to this grave provocation by Iran.” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) urged the administration to “explore whether there are other plots going on . . . in other countries.”