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Shadi Hamid

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Shadi Hamid is Deputy Director of the Brookings Doha Center and Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Brookings, he was Director of Research at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He currently serves as vice-chair of POMED’s board of directors. Hamid has conducted extensive research on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, most recently as a resident fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman. Previously, he served as a program specialist on public diplomacy at the U.S. State Department and a Legislative Fellow at the Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and many other publications. Hamid writes for the National Security Network’s foreign affairs blog Democracy Arsenal and is a fellow of the Truman National Security Project.

Articles written by Shadi Hamid

Democracy Promotion in the Aftermath of Iraq

By Shadi Hamid 16 Mar 2009 | World Politics Review

What if Iraq had succeeded as planned? This is a counterfactual, so there is probably little use in answering it. But there is a different question worth asking, in part because one day we will likely be forced to answer it: What if Iraq succeeds? Although it is still uncertain whether it will, in many ways it must.

Iraq Provincial Elections a Beginning, Not an End

By Shadi Hamid 04 Feb 2009 | World Politics Review

The real test for Iraq's fledgling democracy will not be this past Saturday's voting, but rather how the competing parties come to interpret the election's meaning. These were the first elections since the American invasion in which those in power were called upon to give it up according to the preferences of the electorate. In several key provinces, the process of power transfer has begun. It is less clear how it will end.