The Arab State

It has often been argued that Arab states are arbitrary political creations, lacking historical or present legitimacy. This book, first published in 1990, provides a different picture of ‘the Arab state’, drawing on historical, economic, philosophical and sociological perspectives to give a balanced and convincing view of the complex reality of contemporary Arab politics. The contributors, from the Arab countries, from Europe and the United States, investigate the roots of the nation state in the Arab world, evaluating in particular the economic bases of individual states. They discuss the evolution of Arab societies and the way this is reflected in different states, and examine the problems of domestic and international integration in the Arab context. Original and comprehensive in its findings, this is an essential text on the fundamental political structure of the Arab world. Its interdisciplinary breadth makes possible an entirely new reading of the political reality of the Middle East.

It has often been argued that Arab states are arbitrary political creations, lacking historical or present legitimacy. This book, first published in 1990, provides a different picture of ‘the Arab state’, drawing on historical, economic, philosophical and sociological perspectives to give a balanced and convincing view of the complex reality of contemporary Arab politics. The contributors, from the Arab countries, from Europe and the United States, investigate the roots of the nation state in the Arab world, evaluating in particular the economic bases of individual states. They discuss the evolution of Arab societies and the way this is reflected in different states, and examine the problems of domestic and international integration in the Arab context. Original and comprehensive in its findings, this is an essential text on the fundamental political structure of the Arab world. Its interdisciplinary breadth makes possible an entirely new reading of the political reality of the Middle East.

The 2011 Arab uprisings and their subsequent aftermath have thrown into question some of our long-held assumptions about the foundational aspects of the Arab state. While the regional and international consequences of the uprisings continue to unfold with great unpredictability, their ramifications for the internal lives of the states in which they unfolded are just as dramatic and consequential. States historically viewed as models of strength and stability have been shaken to their foundations. Borders thought impenetrable have collapsed; sovereignty and territoriality have been in flux. This book examines some of the central questions facing observers and scholars of the Middle East concerning the nature of power and politics before and after 2011 in the Arab world. The focus of the book revolves around the very nature of politics and the exercise of power in the Arab world, conceptions of the state, its functions and institutions, its sources of legitimacy, and basic notions underlying it such as sovereignty and nationalism. Inside the Arab State adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, examining a broad range of political, economic, and social variables. It begins with an examination of politics, and more specifically political institutions, in the Arab world from the 1950s on, tracing the travail of states, and the wounds they inflicted on society and on themselves along the way, until the eruption of the 2011 uprisings. The uprisings, the states' responses to them, and efforts by political leaders to carve out for themselves means of legitimacy are also discussed, as are the reasons for the emergence and rise of Daesh and the Islamic State. Power, I argue, and increasingly narrow conceptions of it in terms of submission and conformity, remains at the heart of Arab politics, popular protests and yearnings for change notwithstanding. Much has changed in the Arab world over the last several decades. But even more has stayed the same.

This book explores the conditions of state formation and survival in the Middle East. Based on Historical Sociology, it provides a model for study of the state in the Arab world and a theory to explain its survival. Examining states as a ‘process’, the author argues that what emerged in the Middle East in the beginning of the twentieth century are ‘social fields’—where states form and deform—and not states as defined by Max Weber. He explores the constitutions of these fields—their cultural, material and political structures—and identifies three stages of state development in which different cases can be located. Capturing the dilemmas that ‘late-forming states’ face as regimes within them cope with domestic and international pressure, the author illustrates several Middle East cases and presents a detailed analysis of state developments in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He maintains that more than the domestic characteristics of individual states, state survival in the Middle East is also a function of the anarchic nature of the international (and by extension the regional) states-system. The first to raise the question on the survivability of the territorial states in the Middle East while engaging with both International Relations and Comparative Politics theories, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East politics, Comparative Politics and International Relations.

Why is it that even though they all call themselves Arab, there are actually twenty disparate Arab states? Why have these states engaged in numerous attempts at political unification, each of which has ended in failure? Although the rhetoric of politics in most countries is based on broad, universalist ideas such as nationalism or socialism, why have actual ruling castes been so narrowly based and non-representative? These are some of the questions that inform this comparative study of politics and the role of the state in Arab world, and make this a key textbook for students of Middle East politics, political theory and political economy.

This trenchant history of praetorianism in the Arab world recounts the baleful influence of the armed forces in shaping the region's political landscape over the last three decades.

The Foundations of the Arab State deals with the conceptual, historical, and cultural environment in which the contemporary Arab state system was established and has evolved. With contributions from established scholars in the field, this volume addresses the major issues posed by the emergence of contemporary Arab states, by their consolidation, the role played by foreign powers in their creation, and their future within the region.

This volume, first published in 1988, analyses the process of stabilisation amongst the Arab states, a process that has contradicted all predictions of impending disintegration and impending collapse. Although there were some cases of disintegration, there are evidently mechanisms at work that helped consolidate the majority of Arab states and the Arab state system. Revolutions, as in Iran or the Sudan, or political collapse and disintegration, as in Lebanon, have been highly visible but nevertheless exceptions. This collection, Volume Three in the Nation, State and Integration in the Arab World research project carried out by the Istituto Affari Internazionali, focuses on the problem of explaining the stability and persistence of the state in the Arab world.