"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This book purports to examine the international dimensions of the democratization process in Egypt in the post Cold War era; a theme which acquired significance at the academic and policy-oriented levels in light of the growing internationalization of reform arrangements in the Arab world in post 9/11 and the greater involvement of external powers in Arab politics following the Arab Spring uprisings. During the second half of the twentieth century, the mainstream scholarship presented the democratization process as the outcome of domestic conditions not significantly influenced by actors outside the nation-state. With the end of the Cold War, this perspective was challenged as a result of the third wave of democratization and the subsequent growth of the “good governance” discourse on the agenda of the international development establishment. The new perspective attached a more significant role to external factors in the democratization process than was originally conceptualized.

An overview of the political economy and development of contemporary Egypt, focusing on the nature and extent of economic reform and restructuring in the last twenty years.