ABSTRACT
Of all the Muslim-majority states in the world, those of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have at once the longest historical experiences with democracy and the fewest contemporary manifestations. The decline of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires left their core countries, now known as Turkey and Iran, increasingly vulnerable to European interference; but they are among a handful of Muslim-majority states whose experiences with democratic reform span more than a century. The 1906 Constitutional Revolution in Iran produced a parliamentary system that, despite sharp internal divisions and continuing international and domestic intrigues that undermined its influence, remained in office for two decades. Most of the contemporary nation-states in the MENA were created not along geographically natural boundaries or through generations of alliance and conflict, but as administrative units of large empires or from maps drawn in the European treaty sessions of colonial powers.
