Political Transitions in Today’s Troubled Countries – Is the Rule of Law a Solution?
5:30pm, Monday 4 November 2013
UCL, London, UK
Key Speaker: The Rt. Hon. The Lord Woolf of Barnes
Panellists include:
- Professor Sir Jeffrey Jowell KCMG QC (Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law)
- Professor David Mednicoff (UMASS-Amherst)
- Professor Colleen Graffy (Pepperdine, Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State)
When millions of diverse citizens in the Arab world mobilized successfully in 2011 against decades of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, one of the major hopes for stable, more democratic political orders lay in the reform of legal ideals and institutions. Two years later, the record of political transitions is decidedly mixed in these countries, and other parts of the Middle East and world more generally. With renewed military rule in Egypt, civil war in Syria and political strife elsewhere, what, if anything, does the rule of law offer to improve politics and society?
This event will mark the launch of the global activities of the iPlatform for Global Change. There will also be an announcement of a global prize competition for advanced university students to outline a proposal for a plan for economic and social construction in the Middle East, inspired by aspects of the Marshall Plan (also known as the European Recovery Program) in which the United States gave economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II.