Patrycja Sasnal analyses the features of the Polish transition to democracy particularly relevant to the changes unfolding in Egypt and Tunisia. These include similar initial conditions, a relatively short time span between the waves of change, a religious background and economic hardship. The paper underlines good practices and deficiencies of the transition period in Poland and provides a comparative framework to evaluate recent experiences in Southern Mediterranean countries. (See the full text in pdf)

During the Lebanon's 2005 "Independence Intifada", many observers used to refer to Lebanon as a possible model of democracy and democratization in the region. Nevertheless, the regime didn't keep its promise and the post-2005 political process never fully took off. While the region started to demand the creation of free, open and fair political systems Lebanon seemed stuck in the past. Could it really be that Lebanon has been the exception of the so-called Arab Spring?

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‘The Arab Spring one year after: Challenges, prospects & strategies for change’

29-30 March 2012

Brussels

Organized by: The European Policy Centre, the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) and EuroMeSCo in cooperation with: Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), OMV AG, Austria Robert Bosch Stiftung, Germany Foreign Ministry of the Kingdom of Denmark Foreign Ministry of the Kingdom of Belgium Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung, Germany Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Germany. (See the full program in pdf)

This paper by Antoni Segura analyses the transition processes unfolding in Arab countries and compares them to the Spanish experience. Very often presented as a model, the Spanish transition to democracy offers some lessons and errors to be taken into account by Southern Mediterranean countries. The author argues that the Arab countries should not try to strictly follow previous democratisation experiences because each process is based on its own historical, cultural, religious and socioeconomic conditions and on a correlation of political forces that are by nature different in every country. (See the full text in pdf)