The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region. Chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive annotated bibliographies orient readers towards further research. Whether used in conjunction with its sister volume or on its own, this book provides the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the region’s varied politics. Five new experts cover the critical country cases of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. All chapters cover the latest events, including trends that have remarkably changed in just a few years like the gradual end of the Syrian civil war. As such, this textbook is invaluable to students of Middle Eastern politics.. The ninth edition brings substantial changes. All chapters also have a uniform, streamlined structure that explores the historical context, social and economic environment, political institutions, regime dynamics, and foreign policy of each country. Fact boxes and political maps are now far more extensive, and photographs and images also help illustrate key points. Annotated bibliographies are vastly expanded, providing nothing short of the best list of research references for each country.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the contemporary Maghreb. It includes profiles of individual countries, and regional issues such as migration, gender, economics and war in Western Sahara.

Over ten years after the "Arab Spring", the turmoil that swept across North Africa has taken many forms, bringing about change, although not always in a desirable direction. But the Arab uprisings have also brought about a surprising amount of "more of the same": a decade on, the problems that plagued the region in 2010 have not gone away. This report looks at the future of the region, asking: what will North Africa be in 2030? Which direction could the region as a whole, and specific countries, take, and which challenges will they have to face? And what are the implications for Europe and the US?

The year 2011 will go down in history as a turning point for the Arab world. The popular unrest that swept across the region and led to the toppling of the Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddhafi regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya has fundamentally altered the social, economic, and political outlooks of these countries and the region as a whole. This book assesses the transition processes unleashed by the uprisings that took place in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011. The wave of unrest and popular mobilisation that swept through these countries is treated as the point of departure of long and complex processes of change, manipulation, restructuring, and entrenchment of the institutional structures and logics that defined politics. The book explores the constitutive elements of institutional development, namely processes of constitution making, electoral politics, the changing status and power of the judiciary, and the interplay between the civilian and the military apparatuses in Egypt and Tunisia. It also considers the extent to which these two countries have become more democratic, as a result of their institutions being more legitimate, accountable, and responsive, at the beginning of 2014 and from a comparative perspective. The impact of temporal factors in shaping transition paths is highlighted throughout the book. The book provides a comprehensive assessment of political and institutional transition processes in two key countries in North Africa and its conclusions shed light on similar processes that have taken place throughout the region since 2011. It will be a valuable resource for anyone studying Middle Eastern and North African politics, area studies, comparative institutional development and democratisation.

A seasoned expert on the Maghreb offers a fine-grained analysis of the region's politics in a time of upheaval.

Investigates how regimes in the Maghreb have kept dissent at bay, and the means by which their authority has been challenged

Since 2011, the Arab world has seen a number of autocrats, including leaders from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, fall from power. Yet, in the wake of these political upheavals, only one state, Tunisia, transitioned successfully from authoritarianism to democracy. Opposition parties forged a durable and long-term alliance there, which supported democratization. Similar pacts failed in Morocco and Mauritania, however. In Why Alliances Fail, Buehler explores the circumstances under which stable, enduring alliances are built to contest authoritarian regimes, marshaling evidence from coalitions between North Africa’s Islamists and leftists. Buehler draws on nearly two years of Arabic fieldwork interviews, original statistics, and archival research, including interviews with the first Islamist prime minister in Moroccan history, Abdelilah Benkirane. Introducing a theory of alliance durability, Buehler explains how the nature of an opposition party’s social base shapes the robustness of alliances it builds with other parties. He also examines the social origins of authoritarian regimes, concluding that those regimes that successfully harnessed the social forces of rural isolation and clientelism were most effective at resisting the pressure for democracy that opposition parties exerted. With fresh insight and compelling arguments, Why Alliances Fail carries vital implications for understanding the mechanisms driving authoritarian persistence in the Arab world and beyond.

Since December 2010, a series of uprisings, revolutions, coups and civil wars have shaken up the Middle East and North Africa region. In this chaotic political environment, several countries have been trying to influence this regional transformation. The implications of this transformation are of great importance for the region, its people and global politics. Using a rich combination of primary and secondary sources, elite interviews and content analysis, Yasemin Akbaba and Özgür Özdamar apply role theory to analyze ideational (e.g. identity, religion) and material (e.g. security, economy) sources of national role conceptions in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The authors take a closer look at the transformation of these four powers’ foreign policies since the beginning of Arab uprisings, with a specific focus on religion. Each case study is written to a common template allowing for clear comparative analyses. Written in a clear and accessible style, Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa offers a thought provoking and pioneering insight into the usefulness of role theory in foreign policy making in the developing world. The perfect combination of theoretically oriented and empirically rich analysis make this volume an ideal resource for scholars and researchers of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Middle East Politics and International Security.

Drawing on extensive interviews, Hartshorn explains how labor became a revolutionary topic prior to the Arab Uprisings of 2010-2011.

As the United States slowly disengages from the Middle East and Europe faces internal challenges, a new actor is quietly exerting greater influence across North Africa: China. Beijing's growing footprint in North Africa encompasses, but is not limited to, trade, infrastructure development, ports, shipping, financial cooperation, tourism and manufacturing. It is continuing to expand its co-operation with North African countries, not only in the economic and cultural spheres, but also those of diplomacy and defence. This engagement with North Africa relates to the key aim of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which wants to connect Asia, Africa and Europe and sees potential in North Africa's strategic geographic location. This book is the first to analyse China's role in North Africa. It comprises of five leading country experts - Anouar Boukhars, Yahia Zoubir, Sarah Yerkes, Tareki Magresi and Nael Shama – who examine the various socio-economic, political and security aspects of China's relationship with Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The book explores how China is displaying a development model that seeks to combine authoritarianism with economic growth, a model and that has an eager audience among regimes across the MENA region. It reveals how the China-North Africa relationship fits within the broader dynamics of increasing China-US rivalry. In doing so, contributors explain why China's growing role in North Africa is likely to have far-reaching economic and geopolitical consequences for both countries in the region and around the world.