After the 2011 uprisings started in Tunisia and swept across the Arab region, more than a dozen countries amended their constitutions, the greatest concentration of constitutional reform processes since the end of the Cold War. This book provides a detailed account and analysis of all of these developments. Individual accounts are provided of eight different reform processes (including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Sudan), with particular focus on the historical context, the political dynamics, the particular process that each country followed and the substantive outcome. Zaid Al-Ali deconstructs the popular demands that were made in 2011 and translates them into a series of specific actions that would have led to freer societies and a better functioning state. A revolution did not take place in 2011, but it is inevitably part of the region's future and Arab Constitutionalism explores what that revolution could look like.

After the 2011 uprisings started in Tunisia and swept across the Arab region, more than a dozen countries amended their constitutions, the greatest concentration of constitutional reform processes since the end of the Cold War. This book provides a detailed account and analysis of all of these developments. Individual accounts are provided of eight different reform processes (including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Sudan), with particular focus on the historical context, the political dynamics, the particular process that each country followed and the substantive outcome. Zaid Al-Ali deconstructs the popular demands that were made in 2011 and translates them into a series of specific actions that would have led to freer societies and a better functioning state. A revolution did not take place in 2011, but it is inevitably part of the region's future and Arab Constitutionalism explores what that revolution could look like.

An unbarred account of life in post-occupation Iraq and an assessment of the nation's prospects for the future Many Westerners have offered interpretations of Iraq's nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war and the eventual withdrawal of American troops from the country, but little has been written by Iraqis themselves. This forthright book fills in the gap. Zaid Al-Ali, an Iraqi lawyer with direct ties to the people of his homeland, to government circles, and to the international community, provides a uniquely insightful and up-to-date view of Iraq's people, their government, and the extent of their nation's worsening problems. The true picture is discouraging: murderous bombings, ever-increasing sectarianism, and pervasive government corruption have combined to prevent progress on such crucial issues as security, healthcare, and power availability. Al-Ali contends that the ill-planned U.S. intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have made their own. And yet, despite all efforts to divide them, Iraqis retain a strong sense of national identity, Al-Ali maintains. He reevaluates Iraq's relationship with itself, discusses the inspiration provided by the events of the Arab Spring, and redefines Iraq's most important struggle to regain its viability as a nation.