Peter Seeberg

Since the early weeks of the so-called Arab Spring, high hopes for democratic, social, and political change in the Middle East have been met with varying degrees of frustration. Meer

Democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a central pillar of the foreign policy of the European Union (EU). Rather than concentrating on the relations between the incumbent authoritarian regimes and the opposition in the relevant countries, and on the degree to which these relations are affected by EU efforts at promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law (an outside-in approach), this collection of articles inverts the focus of such relationships and attempts to look at them ‘inside-out’. Meer