This comparative study assesses the state of democracy and examines the process of democratization in the Arab World between the years 1980-1993. It addresses shortcomings in the mainstream democracy literature that excluded the Arab World from the global democratic revolution on political cultural grounds. To fulfil the objectives of this study, I employ both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches to test a number of hypothesized relationships. I hypothesize that transition to democracy is negatively associated with economic development, militarism, U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of oil, and dependency. I contend that emerging civil society institutions so far have had no significant effect on democratization in the Arab World. Finally, I hypothesize that the level of democracy in the Arab World is influenced greatly by the issue of civil rights. In order to investigate the hypothesized relationships, the following data sets have been used: Gastil's Freedom House Data set, "Repression and Freedom in the 1980s" data set, and Vanhanen's 1990 data set. The findings of this study support the aforementioned hypothesized relationships. I find that Arab countries, in general have made modest progress toward democracy, making the Arab World part of the global revolution.

This study was concerned with determining how the Algerian dailies, El Moudjahid, and El Djomhouria, and the United States dailies, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, which function in two different press systems, compare in reporting international news in terms of type and tension. This study concludes that the four dailies are similar in type of news; they report more news than editorials, more straight news than in-depth reports, more news of elites than common people, and more news from the Third World than from the Western World or the socialist bloc, and they differ in tension in that the tension within international news was higher in the two United States dailies than in the two Algerian dailies.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of a meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest, regarding the problem of continued fighting in Vietnam.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of Anwar Sadat and Henry Kissinger to meet again to talk about the upcoming mid-east peace conference.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of President Nixon who is irritated by Congressmen who have criticized handling of his personal finances. This story also says about a bomb which explored in Algerian consulate.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story saying that Kissinger plans to start his Middle East tour.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of Skylab's three astronauts who photographed a partial eclipse of the Sun.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of Henry Kissinger trip through the Mideast.

Script from the WBAP-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, relating a news story of Kissinger to start his tour to visit Algeria. Also, the story of tax status of a public interest research group.