An Arab world in transformation has found France’s elite shamed by its links with the old order. A control-freak president with base political instincts offers little hope for a better policy, says Patrice de Beer.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling family is seeking to mollify discontent by spending some of its vast wealth. But that approach fails to meet the aspirations of a changing society, says Christoph Wilcke.
The military-political deadlock in Libya between supporters and opponents of the Gaddafi regime leaves a pervasive uncertainty over the country’s future. But even greater challenges will follow this conflict, says Alison Pargeter.
The waves of change in the Arab world have women at the centre. But how will they fare as revolt turns towards a new political and social settlement? Rada Ivekovic considers the emerging balance.
The crisis in Libya is confronting the United States with a new awareness of its military and political constraints, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The democracy uprisings in the Arab world hold a lesson for New Delhi, says Meenakshi Ganguly: the need for a foreign-policy stance that matches India's global ambitions.
Women were visible and effective in the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Will this moment of opening yield empowering outcomes? Deniz Kandiyoti argues that the greatest peril lies in truncated or aborted transitions where women’s rights are offered up as an item of populist compromise
The popular risings in the Arab world belong to a wider historical process of worldwide democratic advance. But the disastrous events of the post-9/11 decade have made it far slower and more conflictual than was needed, says Martin Shaw
The emancipatory movements in the Arab world represent an inner shift in the self-understanding of Islam - one that promises to overcome an era of false polarities and dogmas, says Arshin Adib-Moghaddam.
A land whose citizens suffer injustice and cruelty without protection from law or state needs attention, says Delwar Hussain.
Fred Halliday (1946-2010), openDemocracy author and Director-Designate of the LSE Middle East Centre, 2006-2008, did not want the LSE to accept a £1.5m grant. He wrote this memo to the University's governing body in October 2009 to try to convince them to give up the money.
Several Lebanese politicians and commentators have proudly presented the Arab revolutionary movements as an extension of the March 2005 uprising in Beirut. They are quite wrong.
