Elections

Kerry’s Visit to Kabul Will Be Critical to Defusing Afghanistan’s Election Crisis

Zalmay Khalilzad, David Sedney Analyze Hopes for Resolving a Dangerous Dispute This weekend’s visit to Afghanistan by Secretary of State John Kerry will be a critical opportunity to defuse the dispute over Afghanistan’s presidential election that threatens the country’s stability, two former US top officials said. Kerry is to travel to Kabul as presidential candidates […]

Egypt Faces Challenges as it Prepares for Parliamentary Elections

By Yussef Auf

While all eyes were focused in recent weeks on presidential elections and their results, attention should now turn to Egypt’s next vote for the new unicameral parliament, the House of Representatives. The significance of these elections comes from the results of the presidential elections and the events of the last few months. For many reasons […]

Afghanistan: Economic Transition and Transformation

Afghanistan has made enormous progress in reconstruction, development, and lifting per capita income. This progress, including steadily rising per capita income, has occurred despite security challenges and decreasing donor commitments from 2002-2013. Paul Ross, head of the International Monetary Fund’s Afghanistan mission, reported these findings at an Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center discussion on Afghanistan’s […]

Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections Law: A Setback for Democracy

By Khaled Dawoud

Former Egyptian Interim President Adly Mansour had already delivered an emotional farewell speech on June 4, ending nearly one year in office in which he played a largely ceremonial role as he prepared to hand power to the newly elected, former defense minister, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on June 8. However, the next day, Mansour issued […]

Egypt’s New Law for Parliamentary Elections Sets Up a Weak Legislature

By Scott Williamson and Nathan J. Brown

In an uncharacteristically immodest burst of activity, Egypt’s humble and stolid acting president, Adly Mansour, issued a series of last-minute decree-laws before handing authority over to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Some dealt with harassment, preaching, and littering. He still showed caution and restraint in some significant areas—for instance, a set of legislative changes designed to […]

On the Price Egypt Paid, Unacceptable Arrogance, and Major Challenges to Come

By Amr Hamzawy

There is a price to be paid for the absence of democracy and for the way that security practices have dominated the system of rule in Egypt, utterly corrupting political life and subjugating it to the social and party elite such that one must either support these power arrangements, along with their decisions and actions, […]

The Field Marshall Plan

By Matthew Hall

What can the Development Corridor mega-project tell us about how Sisi will govern? In a spate of television interviews during the final stretch of the campaign, presidential hopeful Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke of the entrenched structural problems facing the nation—an economic rut so deep that Egyptians could not hope to “run” from it, but instead […]

Marginalized in Mansoura

By Eric Knecht

If you were looking for a place to understand why Egypt’s younger voters were the least well represented at the presidential polls in May where the choice came down to presidential hopefuls Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabbahi, you could do worse than visiting Mansoura. The bustling Nile delta city, once sharply divided in its […]