This week’s peace picks

Location:The W Hotel
515 15th Street NW
(enter on F Street between 14th and 15th Streets)
Washington, DC 20004

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) cordially invites you to the book launch for The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East by Dr. Marc Lynch, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CNAS and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. On Tuesday, March 27, 2012 from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m., Dr. Lynch will discuss one of the most fundamental changes throughout the history of the modern Middle East: the empowerment of a new generation of Arabs who reject the world they inherited. Hisham Melhem, Washington Bureau Chief for al-Arabiya , will interview Dr. Lynch, followed by Q&A with the audience. Please RSVP online here or call (202) 457-9427.

The Arab Uprising  will be on sale and Dr. Lynch will be available to sign copies during the book-signing cocktail reception from 7:15 to 8:30 p.m.

In The Arab Uprising, Dr. Lynch examines the emerging regional landscape in the Middle East, one in which, he argues, the old heavyweights – Iran, al Qaeda, even Israel – have all been disempowered, and nations like Saudi Arabia are powering a new cold war. Dr. Lynch highlights the new fault lines that are forming between forces of revolution and counter-revolution and shows what it all means for the future of U.S. foreign policy. Deeply informed by inside access to the Obama administration’s decisionmaking process and first-hand interviews with protestors, politicians, diplomats and journalists, The Arab Uprising is an unprecedented and indispensible guide to the changing lay of the land in the Middle East and North Africa.

Hisham Melhem is the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya, the Dubai based satellite channel. He is also the correspondent for Annahar, the leading Lebanese daily.  For four years he hosted Across the Ocean, a weekly current affairs program on U.S.-Arab relations for Al-Arabiya. Mr. Melhem speaks regularly on U.S.-Arab relations, political Islam, intra-Arab relations, Arab-Israeli issues, media in the Arab world, Arab images in American media and U.S. public policies and the Arab world. Mr. Melhem has interviewed many American and international public figures, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

3. Constitution-Making, Electoral Design, and the Arab Spring, NED, 12-2 pm March 29

a luncheon presentation featuring

Andrew Reynolds, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
John Carey, Dartmouth College

with comments by

Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University

Thursday, March 29, 2012
12 noon–2:00 p.m.
(Lunch served 12:00–12:30 p.m.)

1025 F. Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20004
Telephone: 202-378-9675

RSVP (acceptances only) with name and affiliation by Tuesday, March 27.

About the Event:

In December 2010, a Tunisian fruit vendor burned himself to death to protest his treatment by police, marking the start of what has become widely known as the “Arab Spring.” Mass popular protests spread throughout most of the region, and a little more than a year later violent conflict is still raging in Syria and Yemen. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, however, dictators have fallen, and these countries are currently engaged in the struggle to achieve successful transitions to democracy. Among the most difficult challenges that they face are those of drafting and approving new constitutions and of designing electoral systems that will foster both fairness and stability. Getting their new constitutions and electoral systems right will be of crucial importance to their efforts to build functioning and enduring democracies. Andrew Reynolds and John Carey will assess the various paths chosen by these would-be democratizers, drawing upon and updating their co-authored articles in the October 2011 and January 2012 issues of the Journal of Democracy. Donald L. Horowitz will provide comments.

About the Speakers:

Andrew Reynolds is associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where his research focuses on democratization, constitutional design, and electoral politics. He has advised a number of organizations including the UN, NDI, and the State Department. He is currently writing (with Jason Brownlee and Tarek Masoud) The Arab Spring: The Politics of Transformation in North Africa and the Middle East (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012).

John Carey is the Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences and the chair of the government department at Dartmouth College. He is co-editor of the Legislative Studies Quarterly, and his most recent book is Legislative Voting & Accountability (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Donald Horowitz, the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University, is currently a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace, where he is completing a project on “Constitutional Design for Severely Divided Societies.”