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.

Peacekeeping is a means by which international or regional organizations control conflict situations that are likely to endanger international peace and security. Most scholars have viewed the contributions of peacekeeping forces only in terms of failures, and they have not investigated fully the political-military circumstances" under which conflict control measures succeed. This dissertation is an attempt to bridge this gap and to show how the OAU compares with the UN in carrying out peacekeeping missions. The method of research was the case study method in which primary and secondary data was used to describe the situations in which six peacekeeping forces operated. The content of resolutions, official reports and secondary data were examined for non-trivial evidences of impediments to implementation of mandates. Findings from the research indicate that peacekeeping missions not properly backed by political efforts at settlement of disputes, cooperation of the superpowers, and financial and logistic support were ineffective and usually unsuccessful. Lack of consensus and pursuit of national interests have resulted in ambiguous or unrealistic mandates and have reduced the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. Moreover, parties to a conflict were interested only in solutions that favored their interests and were often skeptical about the role and credibility …

The purpose of this study is to examine internal and external factors affecting the Egyptian-Soviet alliance during the period under investigation. Chapter I provides background information on Egyptian-Soviet relations, and in Chapter II important developments in those relations are outlined. Chapter III examines the October War of 1973 and Soviet policy during the war. Chapter IV traces efforts to reach a settlement in the Middle East, highlighting the role of the United States in the negotiations. Finally, Chapter V demonstrates that Egypt, like other small nations, has not surrendered its interests to the aims of either of the superpowers.

This study examines the nature and patterns of Soviet cultural activities in Egypt and Syria, the motivations behind those activities, and the contribution of the Soviet cultural effort toward the attainment of overall Soviet Middle East policies. Chapter I provides background information on Soviet-Arab relations, and in Chapter II Soviet objectives in the Middle East are examined. Chapter III identifies the important components of the Soviet cultural instrument in Egypt and Syria. Chapter IV assesses the contribution made by the cultural tool toward the attainment of Soviet objectives in Egypt and Syria. Finally, Chapter V demonstrates that the Soviet cultural enterprise exerted little impact on overall Soviet policy in the Middle East.

The main objective of this research is to test some of the hypotheses linking economic development, social mobilization, legitimacy, and the coerciveness of the regime with internal political conflict. Each proposed hypothesis is to be tested across sixteen predominantly Islamic Middle Eastern nations for data from two time periods, 1960-66 and 1967-73. To check for the consistency and strength of the hypothesized relationships the test results for each hypothesis for the first period data will be compared with those of the second period.