A Foreign Policy and Saban Center for Middle East Policy Event
Views from the Middle East: Public Opinion in the Arab World
Understanding the mood and opinions of the Arab public is a critical challenge, given the continuing struggle for peace, economic growth and stability in the Middle East. As the people of the region respond to a wide range of dynamics, including American efforts to jump-start the Middle East peace process, stabilize Iraq and counter Iran's bid for hegemony, accurately gauging Arab public opinion is an imperative.
On April 14, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted the release of a new University of Maryland/Zogby International opinion poll reflecting public attitudes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. Saban Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, presented his latest polling research and key findings from the five-nation study. David Ignatius, associate editor and columnist at The Washington Post, joined Dr. Telhami for a discussion of the poll results following the formal presentation of the findings. Saban Center Director Martin S. Indyk provided introductory remarks and moderated the panel discussion.
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SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Let me just put this public opinion poll in some perspective. This is an academic poll. I've been doing polling in the Arab world for about 10 years. This is not intended really so much for any political purposes. Initially this project started before 9/11 and it was intended to look at the new media phenomenon, the information revolution in the mid-1990s, that emerged and to see whether it's having any impact on the way people perceive the world, their opinions, but also notions of identity. And so we started doing some polling particularly to trace what people watch on television, how often they watch it, and to examine what has been termed the Al Jazeera phenomenon, but really all the stations that have come out since particularly satellite television, and in recent years we started also measuring Internet use. So now this year for example we have probably the most significant segment of the public using the Internet that is going to enable us to do statistical analysis. The whole idea behind the project was to have -- we know that really the most interesting part of public opinion is the demographic analysis and also analysis of change over time that allows you ultimately to look back and make an evaluation, so any shortcut is interesting in and of itself, but really the big analysis is when you look back and try to analyze this data over time which is what we're doing.
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Pertinent questions were posed in the following categories (with results cited by country, in aggregate and by comparison to 2006):
-- War in Iraq
-- Iran's Nuclear Program
-- Lebanese Politics
-- Palestinian Domestic Politics
-- Views of Israel
-- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
-- Views of the US
-- Al Qaeda
-- Views of Global Powers and Leaders
-- Media Viewership in the Arab World
Poll
Information (PowerPoint)
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More Polling Info >>
Arab Public Opinion Surveys:
The Sadat Chair, in collaboration with Zogby International, has been conducting public opinion surveys in six Arab countries since 2003 -- Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(KSA) and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Some questions and populations vary from year to year, and others remain fixed to allow analysis of trends. Major findings are presented graphically in Powerpoint slides.
Professor Shibley Telhami, Principal Investigator.
Other researchers include Prof. Joshua S. Goldstein, Shana Marshall, and Micah
Lebson.
No poll was conducted in calendar 2007. The new survey is being conducted in early 2008, with results expected in Spring 2008.
Use the links below to look at results, raw data, or methodological notes.
2008 Arab Public Opinion Survey results
(powerpoint)
2006 Arab Public Opinion Survey results (powerpoint) - Link below (more)
2005 Arab Public Opinion Survey results (powerpoint) - Link below (more)
2005 Arab Public Opinion Survey results with 2004 Comparisons
(powerpoint) - Link below (more)
more..
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SHIBLEY TELHAMI
Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities, including Cornell University, the Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science.
Professor Telhami has also been active in the foreign policy arena. He has served as Advisor to the US Mission to the UN (1990-91), as advisor to former Congressman Lee Hamilton, and as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which was mandated by the Wye River Agreements. Most recently, he served on the Iraq Study Group as a member of the Strategic Environment Working Group. He has contributed to The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times and regularly appears on national and international radio and television. He has served on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, which was appointed by the Department of State at the request of Congress, and he co-drafted the report of their findings, �Changing Minds, Winning Peace.� He also co-drafted several Council on Foreign Relations reports on US public diplomacy, on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and on Persian Gulf security.
His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East
(Westview Press, 2003; updated version, 2004) was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. He is a co-author of Liberty and Power: A Dialogue on Religion and US Foreign Policy in an Unjust World," (Brookings Institution Press, 2004) and he has a book forthcoming Reflections of Hearts and Minds: Media, Opinion and Identity in the Arab World (Brookings Institution Press, 2005). His other publications include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (1995); Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. with Michael Barnett (2002), and numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch (and as Chair of Human Rights Watch/Middle East), the Education for Employment Foundation, and Neve
Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, and several academic advisory boards. He has also served on the board of the United States Institute of Peace. Professor Telhami was given the Distinguished International Service Award by the University of Maryland in 2002 and the Excellence in Public Service Award by the University System of Maryland Board of Regents in 2006.
Books By/With Shibley Telhami
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