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American & European policies toward Hamas have been based largely on the movement's reputation as terrorist, a threat to the peace process & emblematic of the dangers contained in democratic reform. While some debate has occurred in policy circles, US policy remains extremely strict. This has had effects, many of which are negative (undermining Palestinian institutions), while it has not produced a softening of Hamas' position. In recent years, some European states have shown discomfort with the harshness of this policy & the political chaos it threatens to unleash. An alternative policy toward Hamas, more conditional & nuanced, would not necessarily have produced better results over the short term, although it could have produced longer term changes & avoided some of the costs of the draconian path followed. Adapted from the source document.

Liberal constitutionalism is founded in part on a desire to build a polity on the basis of reason and the public interest. At its most ambitious, the result can verge on a prepolitical or even apolitical view of constitution writing. To be sure, most liberal constitutionalists have backed away from the extreme view by increasingly recognizing that passion and bargaining will inevitably play a role in constitution writing. But few have moved beyond grudging acceptance of passion and bargaining to active incorporation. In addition, the terms themselves are used in increasingly slippery ways. Yet while greater terminological precision is desirable and possible, it cannot overcome a key feature of constitution drafting: reason and interest are easily confused in practice as are passion and rationality. Even if reason and deliberation over the public interest could be distinguished from passion and private bargaining, they are unlikely to be able to deliver what is demanded of them. Constitutional politics differs from normal politics less in the role for rationality and the public interest and more in the means used and the number of actors with veto power. In such an environment, partisan interest and passion are not merely inevitable contaminants but essential elements.

In the Arab world, most constitutional documents have been promulgated less by the nation assembled than by existing regimes seeking tools to enable them to face domestic and international challenges. Constitutions have been issued to address a varying range of concerns: international, domestic and internal to the state itself. This article traces the enabling aspects of Arab constitutions over the past century and a half, concentrating on the very recent past. In some ways, the past couple of decades have seen a definite (if limited) upsurge of interest in constitutionalism in the Arab world. Recent constitutional innovations have stressed regularization of authority, bounded democracy and a modest increase in the autonomy of some constitutional structures (especially courts and parliaments). Yet that change should not obscure an underlying continuity. For while the Arab world has joined the global trend toward greater interest in constitutional structures, the changes of the past few decades have not reversed the patterns of the past: constitutions remain politically enabling documents.