DIME
Project on Democracy in the Middle East

DIME Mission Statement

This project brings together faculty and graduate students with diverse disciplinary and country expertise to generate fresh thinking on the Middle East region. We consider the role of politics, history, gender, law, diplomacy, economics, religion, culture, literature, and the media in the evolving transitions in states and societies of the contemporary Middle East.

Participants in the DIME project consider many questions, including: How have religious and historical contexts formed and informed the contested notions of "democracy" in the Middle East? To what extent is the meaning of democracy shared across national and state borders in the Middle East, and among citizens, non-state actors and state agents? How might distinctions in the meaning, practice, and legal underpinnings of democracy in the Middle East be linked to local and global struggles over the place of religion, women, and minorities in the state and within society? What role do diverse societal groups and the media play in regime transformations? How do state and societal militarization and civil-military relations influence democratization processes?

News and Articles

Click here for "Back to the Future? Revisiting Israel's 2009 Elections" by Miriam Fendius Elman, Director of the Project of DIME and Associate Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School.

Click here for page 7 of the Summer 2009 MES Newsletter featuring DIME'S Successful First Year.

DIME Activities 2008-2010

For 2008-2010, the DIME project will sponsor:

Annual conferences
Guest lecture series
Grantsmanship
Research presentations
Coordination with Middle East experts in the tri-state region

DIME SPEAKER SERIES: 2008 - 2010

October 8, 2009

Click here for poster with information on Merhzad Boroujerdi's talk on "The 2009 Elections and the Future of the Iranian Republic".
Place: 341 Eggers Hall. Time: 12 noon.

April 23, 2009

Click here for information on Bruce Rutherford, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colgate University's talk on "Why do Islamist Groups Moderate? Explaining Ideological Change in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood".

April 13, 2009

Click here for information on Yitzhak Reiter, visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Ashkelon Academic College, Israel: "Conflict Resolution in Shared Holy Places in Palestine and Israel" and click here for "Israel and its Arab minority: a special case of any interlocking conflict".

March 31, 2009

Click here for information on Professor Richard T. Antoun's talk on "Tribalism, Democrary, and Civil Society in the Middle East".
Click here for information on Richard T. Antoun discussion on "What Do We Mean By Democracy in the Middle East".

March 26, 2009: SU CONFERENCE

Click here for the keynote address by Alan Dowty, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
Click here for brochure (.pdf)
Click here for poster (.pdf)

The Project on Democracy in the Middle East at Syracuse University sponsored a full day conference on "Democracy, Religion, and Conflict: the Dilemmas of Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking" on Thursday, March 26, 2009 from 9:00-5:30 at the Schine Student Center, 2nd floor. The conference sessions were free and open to the SU community, and to the public. The conference featured Israeli, US, and Canadian experts on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process who presented on a variety of social, institutional, and cultural aspects hindering conflict resolution. For those attending the conference, a reception followed the panel presentations from 5:30-6:30 at 204 Maxwell Hall in the Maxwell School. Faculty, students, and members of the public were welcome to attend any or all of the sessions.

February 13, 2009: PANEL DISCUSSION

Click here for information on the panel discussion held with Elman, Frieden, Olesker and Saran on "Election in Israel: Implications for the Jewish State and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict".

January 22, 2009

Click here for information on Deniz Gokalp, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs: "The State of Contentious Politics: the Kurdish Question in Turkey's Neo-liberal Epoch".

November 20, 2008

Click here for information on Michele Penner Angrist, Associate Professor of Political Science at Union College: "What's Different About the Arab World? Women, Parliament, and War".

Significance of the DIME Project

Extant research on democracy in the Middle East has centered on the reasons why the region has lagged behind others with regard to democratic reform; the compatibility between Islam and democracy; the perceived threat posed by Islamists in elections as an obstacle to democratic openings in the Middle East; the impact of oil economies; a history of colonial rule and authoritarianism that hinders democratic institutional choices; and the likelihood that democratization in the region will mitigate violence in general, and terrorism in the "name of God" in particular. The SU DIME project will both build on this existing scholarship and move beyond it by adopting an explicitly interdisciplinary and cross-regional approach.

For more information on DIME

Contact:
Miriam Fendius Elman
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Faculty Research Associate, Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC)
Director, Project on Democracy in the Middle East, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
400G Eggers Hall
Syracuse, NY 13244-1020.
Tel: 315-443-7404
Email: melman@maxwell.syr.edu

DIME Project on Democracy in the Middle East