Overview

The United States faces no greater challenge today than successfully fulfilling its new ambition of helping bring about a democratic transformation of the Middle East. Uncharted Journey contributes a wealth of concise, illuminating insights on this subject, drawing on the contributors' deep knowledge of Arab politics and their substantial experience with democracy-building in other parts of the world.

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9780870032127

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Reviews

UNCHARTED JOURNEY is an extremely timely and important volume--a dispassionate, incisive, and practical analysis of the opportunities and pitfalls of Western democracy promotion in the Middle East. Highly recommended to policy makers and scholars, as well as to all concerned with the political future of this critical region. --Francis Fukuyama, author, STATE-BUILDING

A must-read for policymakers pondering whether and how America should try to promote democracy in the Middle East without adding to the risk of regional political instability or undermining our own national security. A valuable contribution to a burgeoning field where serious studies on the implications of reform based on lessons learned from other experiments in democracy building are sadly lacking. --Judith S. Yaphe, National Defense University and Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University The essays edited by Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway offer a welcome corrective to a foreign policy built on abstractions. The authors stress differences among Middle Eastern nations, along dimensions such as social structure, the balance of political forces, and the degree of autocracy. They emphasize the weakness of the constituencies favoring liberal democracy and the contrasting strength of Islamist organizations. They point to subtle paradoxes that impede the path to democracy - for example, the fact that secular liberal democrats and proponents of women's rights, if forced to choose, will often make common cause with autocrats rather than risk an Islamist takeover. Nineteen-fifties-style modernization theory is not the whole truth, but neither is it wholly misleading: Under some circumstances, economic liberalization and growth may have to precede democratization. --William A. Galston, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, American Prospect , 6/15/2005 This excellent, much-needed book is packed with critical insights for the development of effective democracy promotion policies and programs in the Middle East. It also provides refreshing, innovative ideas about possible routes to Arab democracy and the new realities of regional attitudes toward political change. --Laith Kubba, National Endowment for Democracy UNCHARTED JOURNEY is an extremely timely and important volume--a dispassionate, incisive, and practical analysis of the opportunities and pitfalls of Western democracy promotion in the Middle East. Highly recommended to policy makers and scholars, as well as to all concerned with the political future of this critical region. --Francis Fukuyama, author, STATE-BUILDING

Author Information

Thomas Carothers is vice president for international politics and governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and founder and director of the Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project. Marina Ottaway is director of the Carnegie Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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