Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East
Mehran Kamrava
Abstract
Although the concept of “state failure” emerged after the Cold War, it gained major prominence after the September 11 attacks with the emerging discourse focusing primarily on the Greater Middle East. This book aims to critically analyse the current definitions and terminology of weak and fragile states, scrutinizing the political implications of the prevailing discourse within the setting of the broader Middle East. It also examines the domestic, regional, and global causes and consequences for the Middle East of the “fragility” of states stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east t ... More
Although the concept of “state failure” emerged after the Cold War, it gained major prominence after the September 11 attacks with the emerging discourse focusing primarily on the Greater Middle East. This book aims to critically analyse the current definitions and terminology of weak and fragile states, scrutinizing the political implications of the prevailing discourse within the setting of the broader Middle East. It also examines the domestic, regional, and global causes and consequences for the Middle East of the “fragility” of states stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east to Libya in the west. Employing multidisciplinary perspectives, this book studies the causes and implications of conceptual notions of state fragility across the region in relation to areas such as politics and security, economics and natural resources, intra-and inter-state relations, migration and population movements, and the broader regional and global political economies. It shows that not only are several states in the Middle East chronically “weak”, e.g. Lebanon, Yemen, and the Sudan, most others possess inherent structural and institutional features that compromise their capacity, devoid them of legitimacy, and make them prone to weakness.
Keywords:
state failure,
Middle East,
fragile states,
political economies,
capacity,
political legitimacy,
migration,
state weakness,
Arab Spring
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190246211 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190246211.001.0001 |
