Democracy and Reform in the Middle East and Asia

Amin Saikal is Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University, as well as at Sussex University's Institute of Development Studies. He has also been a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in International Relations. He is the author of a number of works on the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia, including Islam and the West: Conflict or Cooperation? (2003); The Rise and Fall of the Shah: Iran from Autocracy to Religious Rule (2009), Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival (I.B.Tauris, revised 2012) and States of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran (I.B.Tauris, forthcoming). Amitav Acharya is Professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C., USA, having previously held Professorships at the University of Bristol and York University, Toronto. His recent books include Whose Ideas Matter? (2009); Beyond Iraq: The Future of World Order (co-edited, 2011); Non-Western International Relations Theory (co-edited, 2010); and The Making of Southeast Asia (2011).