War and State Building in the Middle East
War and State Building in the Middle East

Author: Rolf Schwarz

Publisher: Governance and International R

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9780813044743

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"This comparative volume explores the dramatic pathways of political development undertaken by rentier regimes in the Arab world. Here, waging war proved to weaken rather than strengthen state capacity in pernicious ways--an insight that contrasts sharply with received Western wisdom about war being the crucible of modern state building."--Sean L. Yom, Temple University "An important contribution to the literature on state building in the Middle East."--Gawdat Bahgat, author of Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East War and State Building in the Middle East addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the authoritarian-regime governments commonly found in the Middle East, particularly among oil-rich countries. In this region, war has interacted with processes of state making in ways that fundamentally differ from the European experience. In short, unlike in Europe, wars do not make states in the Middle East; they destroy them. According to economic theory, most oil-rich countries are rentier states; that is, they rely upon the extraction of a natural resource to generate revenue and authority for the central government. As a result, there is little reliance upon domestic taxation and a general lack of political accountability and transparency. By examining how such governments wage war, Rolf Schwarz turns the prevailing wisdom of modern state building on its head. He closely analyzes the real-world experiences of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Iraq to show how rentierism leads to internal weaknesses when it comes to governing. His comparative approach allows him to demonstrate how varying levels of reliance upon external resource rents are reflected in the structure of the regime. By highlighting the perils of funding wars through the sale of natural resources, fighting with imported weaponry, and accepting peace settlements negotiated and guaranteed by foreign powers, Schwarz offers provocative insights into post-conflict peace building, state failure, and the potential for democratic rule in the region. Rolf Schwarz is professor at the NATO Defense College in Rome.

State Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East
State Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East

Author: Lecturer in the Recent Economic History of the Middle East and Fellow Roger Owen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-04-12

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1134643551

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Roger Owen has fully revised and updated his authoritative text to take into account the considerable developments in the Middle East in the 1990s.

Statebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa
Statebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Irene Costantini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-26

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1351121332

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This book examines the regime changes in Iraq and Libya to unravel the complexity of statebuilding in countries emerging from authoritarianism and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Framed in a comparative study of post-2003 Iraq and post-2011 Libya, the book examines changes in key state dimensions – representation and political authority, security, and wealth creation and distribution – in a continuous dialogue with past trajectories in these two countries. To grasp the nature and degree of these changes, the mechanisms of state formation are explored in light of a statebuilding agenda that, in its application from Iraq to Libya, has adapted to different political prerogatives. The analysis of Iraq and Libya serves the book’s ultimate goal to address the debate on statebuilding from a regional (MENA) perspective and to lay the ground for the study of other contemporary cases undergoing radical and violent process of changes, such as in Syria and Yemen. The book grapples with problems associated with the difficult process of transition from authoritarianism through conflict and towards peace by focusing on the state, its structure and function. The work is informed by a large quantity of materials collected over the past five years, including secondary literature, policy papers and reports, and semi-structured interviews with key informants on Iraq and Libya. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, Middle Eastern studies, peace and conflict studies, and International Relations in general.

Archive Wars
Archive Wars

Author: Rosie Bsheer

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1503612589

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A study of the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s efforts to construct and disseminate a historical narrative to legitimize its rule. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural, and spatial policies. With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars shows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history, and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation. Praise for Archive Wars “An instant classic. With incredible insight, creativity, and courage, Rosie Bsheer peels away the political and institutional barriers that have so long mystified others seeking to understand Saudi Arabia. Bsheer tells us remarkable new things about the exercise and meaning of power in today’s Saudi Arabia.” —Toby Jones, Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia “There are now two distinct eras in the writing of Saudi Arabian history: before Rosie Bsheer’s Archive Wars and after.” —Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft “Archive Wars explores with conceptual brilliance and historical aplomb the various forms of historical erasure central not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but to all modern states. In a finely-grained analysis, Rosie Bsheer rethinks the significance of archives, historicism, capital accumulation, and the remaking of the built environment. A must-read for all historians concerned with the materiality of modern state formation.” —Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis, author of The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt

Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East
Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East

Author: Farhad Kazemi

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780813011028

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"These essays are of uniformly high quality, scholarly in tone, while addressing concerns of utmost importance for an understanding of Middle East politics. [The editors] provide an excellent overview . . . and there-after the reader is treated to historical and comparative studies that are very informative. A first-rate collection."--Foreign Affairs Contents 1. Peasants Defy Categorization (As Well as Landlords and the State), by John Waterbury 2. Changing Patterns of Peasant Protest in the Middle East, 1750-1950, by Edmund Burke III 3. Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire, 1830-1914, by Donald Quataert 4. Violence in Rural Syria in the 1880s and 1890s: State Centralization, Rural Integration, and the World Market, by Linda Schatkowski Schilcher 5. The Impact of Peasant Resistance on Nineteenth-Century Mount Lebanon, by Axel Havemann 6. Peasant Uprisings in Twentieth-Century Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, by Farhad Kazemi 7. War, State Economic Policies, and Resistance by Agricultural Producers in Turkey, 1939-1945, by Sevket Pamuk 8. Rural Change and Peasant Destitution: Contributing Causes to the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939, by Kenneth W. Stein 9. Colonization and Resistance: The Egyptian Peasant Rebellion, 1919, by Reinhard C. Schulze 10. The Ignorance and Inscrutability of the Egyptian Peasantry, by Nathan Brown 11. The Representation of Rural Violence in Writings on Political Development in Nasserist Egypt, by Timothy Mitchell 12. Clan and Class in Two Arab Villages, by Nicholas S. Hopkins 13. State and Agrarian Relations Before and After the Iranian Revolution, 1960-1990, by Ahmad Ashraf 14. Peasant Protest and Resistance in Rural Iranian Azerbaijan, by Fereydoun Safizadeh John Waterbury is professor of politics and international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton. Farhad Kazemi is professor of politics at New York University.

State-Building in the Middle East and North Africa
State-Building in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0755601424

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Why have state-building projects across the MENA region proven to be so difficult for so long? Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, the countries of the region began a violent and divisive process of state formation. But a century later, state-building remains inconclusive. This book traces the emergence and evolution of state-building across the MENA region and identifies the main factors that impeded its success: the slow end of the Ottoman Empire; the experience of colonialism; and the rise of nationalistic and religious movements. The authors reveal the ways in which the post-colonial state proved itself authoritarian and formed on the model of the colonial state. They also identify the nationalist and Islamist movements that competed for political leadership across the nascent systems, enabling the military to establish a grip on the security apparatus and national economies. Finally, in the context of the Arab Spring and its conflict-filled aftermath, this book shows how external powers reasserted their interventionism. In outlining the reasons why regional states remained hollow and devoid of legitimacy, each of the contributors shows that recent conflicts and crises are deeply connected to the foundational period of one century ago. Edited by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, the volume features contributions by stellar scholars including Faleh Abdel Jabar, Lisa Anderson, Bertrand Badie, François Burgat, Benoit Challand, Ahmad Khalidi, Henry Laurens, Bruce Rutherford, Jordi Tejel and Ghassan Salamé.

Minorities and State-Building in the Middle East
Minorities and State-Building in the Middle East

Author: Paolo Maggiolini

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-19

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 3030543994

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This book offers fresh insights to enhance and diversify our understanding of the modern history of the state and societies in today’s Jordan, while also providing examples of why and how scholars can challenge the static and discursively government-minded approaches to minorities and minoritisation – especially the traditional emphasis on demographic balances. Despite its small size and initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent case of a dynamic, relational, historically contingent and fluid approach to ethnic, political and religious minorities in the context of the imposition of a modern state system on complex and varied traditional societies. The editors and contributors present dynamic and relational perspectives on the status of and historical processes involved in the creation and absorption of minority groups within Jordan.

America's War for the Greater Middle East
America's War for the Greater Middle East

Author: Andrew J. Bacevich

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0553393936

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A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs.

War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East
War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East

Author: Steven Heydemann

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2000-12

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0520224221

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A fresh look at the effects of war on state and society in the Middle East, challenging traditional assumptions based on European experience. The authors argue that war has destabilized Middle Eastern states and eroded national cohesion.

War and State Building in Medieval Japan
War and State Building in Medieval Japan

Author: John A. Ferejohn

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-04-20

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0804774315

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The nation state as we know it is a mere four or five hundred years old. Remarkably, a central government with vast territorial control emerged in Japan at around the same time as it did in Europe, through the process of mobilizing fiscal resources and manpower for bloody wars between the 16th and 17th centuries. This book, which brings Japan's case into conversation with the history of state building in Europe, points to similar factors that were present in both places: population growth eroded clientelistic relationships between farmers and estate holders, creating conditions for intense competition over territory; and in the ensuing instability and violence, farmers were driven to make Hobbesian bargains of taxes in exchange for physical security.