Arab Constitutionalism: The Coming Revolution

Zaid Al-Ali

Aug 2021 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

Zaid Al-Ali is the Senior Adviser in Constitution-Building in the Arab Region for International IDEA. He has law three law degrees from Harvard Law School, the Sorbonne University, and King's College London. He has been practicing international commercial arbitration since 1999 and has been advising on constitutional drafting in Arab countries since 2005.