In recent weeks, the Iranian regime has cracked down on journalists and activists in the lead-up to parliamentary elections in early March 2012. In another instance of the regime eating its own, Faezeh Hashemi, the prominent daughter of former president Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani, was one of the activists targeted. On January 3, she was sentenced to 6 months in prison for spreading propaganda about the Islamic Republic. The charge is related to comments she made in April 2011 to an opposition news source accusing the regime of being run by “thugs and hooligans.” Hashemi herself was harassed by security forces on several occasions. As part of her sentence, she has been banned from any political or organizational activity for 5 years. She can appeal, but clearly the regime wants to keep her – and by extension her father – quiet in the run-up to the March elections. She’s a de facto hostage. Read more »

I have been attending the US-Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference this week in Marrakech, Morocco, hosted by Partners for a New Beginning – the North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (PNB-NAPEO). This is the second annual entrepreneurship conference in North Africa, and it has brought together an impressive array of business executives, policy makers, civil society organizations, and entrepreneurs to focus on some of the most critical components of economic and political development: the connection between education and employment, creating an entrepreneurial environment, and fostering small and medium enterprises. Read more »

Charles Landow covers China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and the European Parliament in this week’s Missing Pieces. Enjoy the selection and let us know your thoughts.

• Wobbling Growth in China…: Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post this week considers the prospect of a major slowdown in China. Ingredients include a potential housing bubble, weak demand for Chinese exports abroad, and rising government debt. A “soft landing,” or modest reduction in GDP growth, is still seen as likely, but a Nomura report cited by Samuelson sees a one-in-three chance of a steeper drop. A recent op-ed by CFR president Richard Haass reviews China’s daunting economic to-do list. The current Foreign Affairs also features a debate over the prospects for China’s continued rise. Read more »

On January 3 and 4, Egyptians voted in the third and final stage of elections for the lower house of Parliament, the People’s Assembly. Seventy-one out of 498 seats are still being decided through runoffs, but the results for the other 427 seats are final. One clear outcome already is that Islamist parties will wield significant influence in the People’s Assembly. So far, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)  has gained approximately 41 percent of total seats and the Salafist Nour Party has gained another 21 percent, giving Islamist parties a significant majority in the assembly. However, FJP reports no current plans to form a coalition with the Salafis, and it is possible that FJP will create a moderate alliance with more liberal parties. Read more »

Quotas for women seem to be the hot thing in the Middle East these days. Libya just announced a 10 percent quota for women in its new election law. Tunisia used a form of quotas to enhance women’s participation in its recent election. Iraq has used quotas in parliament and just expanded the use of quotas for women to the civil service; Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan have also used quotas. Over the past week, I’ve received several queries from blog readers about quotas: Which countries use them? How do they work? Are they democratic? Are they even effective? These are all big questions, and to answer them thoroughly is beyond the scope of this blog post, so here is just a snap-shot. Read more »

Charles Landow highlights a trio of Foreign Affairs articles, new surveys of international relations scholars and practitioners, and news from Singapore in this edition of Missing Pieces. Enjoy!

• Pictures of Poverty: In the January/February Foreign Affairs, Timothy Besley reviews three noteworthy books on global poverty: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics, Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel’s More Than Good Intentions, and Daryl Collins et. al.’s Portfolios of the Poor. The former two volumes use behavioral economics and randomized control trials to chronicle poverty’s problems and potential solutions. The latter employs interviews to illuminate the complex financial arrangements used by many poor households. Besley gently notes that none of the books deals much with political economy–questions of government effectiveness in promoting development. Still, he praises all three as useful for understanding poverty. Isobel Coleman held a CFR meeting with Dean Karlan last spring. Read more »

I’ve received a number of comments on my post yesterday about Libya’s new (draft) election law, so I’m revisiting that topic again today.  First, for those of you who are interested (and several have asked), here’s a link to an unofficial English translation of the draft law. Second, in a new development, the Libyan interim government yesterday scrapped the 1972 law banning political parties. In anticipation of this, new parties have been forming over the past several months and many more are undoubtedly in the wings. Civil society, lacking for decades in Libya, is resurrecting itself, although the challenges it faces will be formidable. Religiously oriented groups will likely have an edge both in organizational capacity and in financing. Read more »