The State in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA): Dynamics and Diversity of a Moving Object
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Revisiting the State, Again.
Edited par Eberhard Kienle
Ten years after large scale protests in numerous Arab countries drove home the importance of collective action, contestation, social movements, and other forms of politics from below, political actors and observers alike have once again shifted their attention toward the state—or what they consider as such. Even though it emphasises the state’s deficiencies or even absence, the—contested—concept of the “failing state” and its avatars refer to an entity called the state. The reaffirmation of authoritarian rule in such countries as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and more recently even Tunisia, ambitious “development” plans like Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia and their attendant public policies, and the nuclear programme in Iran all illustrate the importance and impact of states, however conceived, defined, delineated, and composed. Continued military action or threats, as well as action to combat—or deny—the coronavirus pandemic, only confirm this observation...Read more - Fluid and Failing, Yet Static: The Afterlife of Arab States, by Ariel Ahram
- From Leviathan to Behemoth: The State in the Arab World of the 2010s, by Hamit Bozarslan
- Statehood in the Middle East and North Africa: Approaches from Historical Sociology, Part I, the Rationale, by Raymond Hinnebusch
- Dealing with the State: Politicization of State Bureaucracies and Differential State Capacity in Post-Revolutionary Iran and Post-Colonial Pakistan, by Guillaume Beaud
- Why Have “Failed States” Failed to Disappear, by Eberhard Kienle
- How Economic Policies Affect Political Regimes? Comparing the 2020s to the 1980s in the Middle East and North Africa, by Ishac Diwan
A new Dossier du CERI
Cover image: The Seven Pointed Star No. 1, by Hilma af Klint (1908), image in the Public Domain
