Two stories characterize the Middle East in general—and the Arab world in particular. They are robust authoritarian regimes suffering economic dysfunction under the stifling “institutional stagnation” of Islamic law. Neither story is credible. In this paper I draw on rather standard economic and demographic data to construct a model of the trajectories to political revolt in 16 Arab countries. ...

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of cultural values on motivations and attitudes toward Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in the Arab world, and the factors affecting the continuity of membership value. Online questionnaire was used to collect data from the Arab Facebook members. Structural Equation Modeling, using EQS was conducted to analyze the data. The results indicat...

The Middle East and North Africa (henceforth MENA) are areas of conflict and opposed perceptions. The last three months have seen unprecedented protests and revolutions in almost all Arab countries (“Arab Spring”), starting in Tunisia with the flight of Ben Ali and his family, spreading to Egypt with the overthrow of Mubarak and his government, and to Libya with its civil war and most recently ...

This article reveals, by studying correlative relationships between US regime support and regime properties, that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally helped governments to limit the political participation of Islamists, communists, enemies of Israel and populations that could be hostile to the US oil interests. This way the US economic and strategic security interests hav...