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

North Africa differs from the Middle East in several significant ways. It was subject to a uniform colonial experience as part of the French empire; its populations are far more culturally homogeneous than those of the Middle East; and, since the Reconquista, it has always been far more susceptible to European influences than has the Middle East. It has thus had a far better basis for regional integration and for effective state formation than has the Middle East itself. In the post-Cold War world, North Africa took on a new significance for Europe as issues of migration and regional trade began to dominate the European agenda. This book, first published in 1993, endeavours to investigate the background to the political developments of modern North Africa. It not only looks at the pre-colonial past but also investigates the effect of the colonial period itself on the regional dimension in view of the creation of the UMA, a confederal regional organisation, in early 1989. The contributors to this volume are all people with long experience of the North African political and historical scene.

Examines how French colonial modernity invented the concept of the Maghreb, making it distinct from Africa and the Middle East.

Offers unique insights into the inner workings of jihadist organisations over the past three decades in North Africa and the Sahel.

Foreign Policy in North Africa explores how the foreign policies of North African states, which occupy a peripheral and subaltern position within the global system, have actively responded to the constraints and opportunities stemming from multi-level transformations in the 2010s. What has been the extent of continuity and change in each country’s foreign policy-making and behaviour under such conditions? Which structural and agential factors explain the variations observed, or the lack thereof? Building on scholarship on foreign policy in the Global South and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as the international impact of the 2011 Arab uprisings, case studies on six different countries focus on a specific level of analysis for each. These range from the global (Tunisia’s financial predicaments and foreign debt negotiations) through the (sub)regional (Egypt’s relationship of necessity with Saudi Arabia, Algeria’s half-hearted policies towards the conflicts in Libya and Mali) to the domestic sphere (Morocco’s power balance between the monarchy and the Islamist-led government, Libya’s extreme state weakness and internal competition among proliferating actors), reaching also the deeper non-state societal level in the case of Mauritania. The volume concludes by examining post-2011 developments in the longstanding Algerian–Moroccan rivalry which hinders regional integration in the Maghreb. Foreign Policy in North Africa will be of great interest to scholars of North African politics and international relations, Middle Eastern and North African studies, foreign policy and global international relations. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of North African Studies.

Early childhood is the most important stage of human development yet in Middle East and North Africa countries there is little research and inadequate investment in this crucial stage of life. This book covers risk, protective factors, policies and programs that can address inequality and shortfalls in the early years of life.

Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

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.