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 publication describes major global environmental issues and policy decisions during 2006.

This publication is an overview of major global environmental issues and policy decisions during the course of 2007.

The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the management of communal conflict in the Middle East, focusing on the Kurds. To this end, an effort is made to examine (1) the means that have been used to manage the Kurdish conflict by Middle Eastern countries; (2) the degree of success or failure of applied measures and (3) possible explanations for the first two questions.

This study assumes that political terrorism results from conscious decision-making by groups opposing a governing system, policy or process. The kinds of terrorist activity employed depend upon such factors as the philosophy, goals, objectives, and needs of the terrorist group. This presents a comparative analysis of three types of terrorists in southwest Asia: Palestinians, Marxist-Leninists, and Muslims. The first section summarizes and compares the three groups' motivational causes, philosophies, histories and sources of inspiration. The second section compares their behavior from four perspectives: trends and patterns, level of violence, tactical preferences, and lethality. The third section identifies and categorizes socioeconomic, political and military variables associated with tactic selection and acts of terrorism.

The Tigris and Euphrates are international rivers vital to the four countries through which they flow: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The population in the region has more than doubled in less than thirty years, and irrigated agriculture, hydroelectric power generation, industrialization, and urbanization have increased. All of these developments require more water, and the dependence of the riparian nations on the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers has become apparent, as has the need for comprehensive, basin-wide management of water resources. At present the riparians have shown some concern about the management of water in the two rivers, although no consensus exists as to the precise nature of the problem or what should be done to resolve it. This policy-oriented dissertation attempts to help frame the policy issues of managing the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates basin. It also seeks to provide an understanding of the policy process and to meet the intelligence needs of policy-makers with regard to the future management of these international waterways. Finally, it provides strategies for developing and implementing a cooperative water policy for this international basin.

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.

Chapter I of this study of the Arabian Ba'th Socialist Party discusses the evolution of Arab nationalism and concludes that Ba'th was a natural outcome of this evolution; two intellectuals supporting Arab nationalism were Party co-founders Michael Aflaq and Salah Bitar, Part One of Chapter II summarizes their lives to facilitate understanding of their thought and its impact on Ba'th; Part Two examines the Party's first convention (source of the Ba'th constitution), the reasons for it, and the necessity of establishing Ba'th; and Part Three outlines Ba'th ideology and organization. Chapter III analyzes Ba'th's promotion of Syrian-Egyptian union and that union's resultant adverse effect upon Party cohesiveness, The Conclusion discusses the groups into which Ba'th split after 1961 and their new interpretations of Ba'th ideology.

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.

Tunza is a magazine published by the UN Environment Programme about environmental issues from a youth perspective. This issue is about transportation, urban planning, waste management, and ecology.