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Albuquerque World Affairs Council hosts: Democracy’s Struggle in the Modern Arab Nation State.

Most Arab states in the Middle East in the past century have extolled the virtues of democracy and the need to establish participatory political systems, but instead they have produced strongman, autocratic forms of government. The presentation will focus on the role of ideology in undermining the cause of democracy and will examine the key ideologies–including Islamism, Ba’thism, nationalism, and anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel—and how regimes have used these ideologies to further their strongman, anti-democratic rule.

Dr. Emile Nakhleh was a Senior Intelligence Service officer and a founding Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a founding Director of the Global and National Security Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing State, and The Persian Gulf and American Policy. He has written extensively on Middle East politics, political Islam, radical Sunni ideologies, and terrorism. He is also the President of the World Affairs Council of Albuquerque. Emile received his BA in Political Science from St. John’s University in Minnesota, an MA in Political Science from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the American University in Washington, DC.