The Palestinian in Diaspora

There were several things I was interested in learning. First, I wanted to examine individual Palestinian views to compare them with what the Palestinian leadership states in representing them. Also, I wanted to discover how the Palestinians outside of the Occupied Territories feel about a Palestinian nation its leadership, and the leadership's goals. Second, I wanted to learn about the socialization and politicalization process of Palestinians because most Palestinians under thirty living in Diaspora have never seen Palestine let alone lived there. I was interested in how these young Palestinians have come to relate so strongly to a land they have never seen and how Palestinian history is passed on to them. Third, I want to examine two statements I have repeatedly seen in scholarly wrks on Palestinians: 1) That education is extremely important to the Palestinians because it helps them move up the social ladder; and 2) That Palestiniane as a nation did not exist until the expulsion in 1948 and that this expulsion created the Palestinian nation (nation as different from a state which requires territory). Finally, I wanted to find out how Palestinians view themselves in this Diaspora

Multi-Party Elections in the Arab World: Institutional Engineering and Oppositional Strategies

Recent moves toward multi-party competition for elected legislatures in numerous Arab countries constitute a significant departure from earlier practices there, and create the basis for democratic activists to gradually chip away at persistent authoritarian rule. This article explores the institutional mechanisms by which incumbent authoritarian executives seek to engineer these elections. It documents examples of rulers changing electoral systems to ensure compliant legislatures, and demonstrates the prevalent use of winner-takes-all electoral systems, which generally work to the regimes\u27 advantage. I then review various strategies of opposition forces--boycotts, non-competition agreements, election monitoring, and struggles over election rules--and the dilemmas that these entail. Surmounting differences in terms of ideologies, as well as short-term political goals and prospects, is a central challenge. The future should see greater electoral participation among opposition activists, along with cleaner elections. As vote coercion and ballot box stuffing is restricted by opposition pressures, electoral institutions will take on greater importance, and struggles for proportional representation are likely to increase