Based on comparative historical analyses of Iran, Jordan, and Kuwait, Sean L. Yom examines the foreign interventions, coalitional choices, and state outcomes that made the political regimes of the ...modern Middle East. A key text for foreign policy scholars,From Resilience to Revolutionshows how outside interference can corrupt the most basic choices of governance: who to reward, who to punish, who to compensate, and who to manipulate.
As colonial rule dissolved in the 1930s and 1950s, Middle Eastern autocrats constructed new political states to solidify their reigns, with varying results. Why did equally ambitious authoritarians meet such unequal fates? Yom ties the durability of Middle Eastern regimes to their geopolitical origins. At the dawn of the postcolonial era, many autocratic states had little support from their people and struggled to overcome widespread opposition. When foreign powers intervened to bolster these regimes, they unwittingly sabotaged the prospects for long-term stability by discouraging leaders from reaching out to their people and bargaining for mass support-early coalitional decisions that created repressive institutions and planted the seeds for future unrest. Only when they were secluded from larger geopolitical machinations did Middle Eastern regimes come to grips with their weaknesses and build broader coalitions.
Imagining Babylon Liverani, Mario
2016, 2016-07-11, Letnik:
11
eBook
Ever since the archaeological rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, generations of scholars have attempted to reconstruct the "real Babylon," known to us before from the evocative biblical account of ...the Tower of Babel. After two centuries of excavations and scholarship, Mario Liverani provides an insightful overview of modern, Western approaches, theories, and accounts of the ancient Near Eastern city.
As its interests have become deeply tied to the Middle East, the United States has long sought to develop a usable understanding of the people, politics, and cultures of the region. InImagining the ...Middle East, Matthew Jacobs illuminates how Americans' ideas and perspectives about the region have shaped, justified, and sustained U.S. cultural, economic, military, and political involvement there.Jacobs examines the ways in which an informal network of academic, business, government, and media specialists interpreted and shared their perceptions of the Middle East from the end of World War I through the late 1960s. During that period, Jacobs argues, members of this network imagined the Middle East as a region defined by certain common characteristics--religion, mass politics, underdevelopment, and an escalating Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and as a place that might be transformed through U.S. involvement. Thus, the ways in which specialists and policymakers imagined the Middle East of the past or present came to justify policies designed to create an imagined Middle East of the future. Jacobs demonstrates that an analysis of the intellectual roots of current politics and foreign policy is critical to comprehending the styles of U.S. engagement with the Middle East in a post-9/11 world.
The European Union and the Arab Spring: Promoting Democracy and Human Rights in the Middle East, edited by Joel Peters, analyzes the response of the European Union to recent uprisings in the Middle ...East. The past year has witnessed a wave of popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East which the Western media dubbed “the Arab Spring.” Demanding greater freedoms, political reform, and human rights, the protesters swept away many of the region’s authoritarian autocratic regimes. The events of the Arab Spring have been truly historic. They led to profound changes in the domestic order of Middle Eastern states and societies and impacted the international politics of the region. Additionally, these events necessitate a comprehensive reappraisal by the United States and most notably by the EU in their relations with the states and peoples of the region. This timely collection brings together nine leading authorities on European foreign policy and the Middle East, and investigates three central questions: What role did the European Union play in promoting democracy and human rights in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East? How did the EU respond to the uprisings of the Arab street? What challenges is Europe now facing in its relations with the region? Peters’ The European Union and the Arab Spring is at the forefront of scholarship on this historic socio-political shift in the Middle East and its wider implications for the West.
How do aspiring and established rising global powers respond to conflict? Using China, the book studies its response to wars and rivalries in the Middle East from the Cold War to the present.
Since ...the People's Republic was established in 1949, China has long been involved in the Middle East and its conflicts, from exploiting or avoiding them to their management, containment or resolution. Using a conflict and peace studies angle, Burton adopts a broad perspective on Chinese engagement by looking at its involvement in the region's conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Iraq before and after 2003, Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Gulf crisis and the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The book reveals how a rising global and non-Western power handles the challenges associated with both violent and non-violent conflict and the differences between limiting and reducing violence alongside other ways to eliminate the causes of conflict and grievance.
Contributing to the wider discipline of International Relations and peace and conflict studies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, Chinese foreign policy and the politics and international relations of the Middle East.
This deeply informed book considers the intertwined roles of faith, force, and finance in shaping the modern Middle East, including the relentless surge of terror in the region and beyond. Monte ...Palmer provides lessons learned from ten critical periods, beginning with World War I through the current chaos and stalemate.
... Will have an impact on two important fields of scholarship:
social movement theory and the study of Islamic activist movements. -- John
Voll, Georgetown University This volume represents the ...first
comprehensive attempt to incorporate the study of Islamic activism into social
movement theory. It argues that the dynamics, processes, and organization of Islamic
activism can be understood as important elements of contention that transcend the
specificity of Islam as a system of meaning and identity and a basis for
collective action. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the contributors show how social
movement theory can be utilized to address a wide range of questions about the
mobilization of contention in support of Muslim causes. The book covers myriad
examples of Islamic activism (Sunni and Shi'a) in eight countries (Arab and
non-Arab), including case studies of violence and contention, networks and
alliances, and culture and framing.
