Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa PDF Download

Author: Imad Mansour
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626167680
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine issue-driven antagonisms within groups of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states and their impact on relations within the region. The volume also considers how shock events, such as internal revolts and regional wars, can alter interstate tensions and the trajectory of conflict. MENA has experienced more internal rivalries than any other region, making a detailed analysis vital to understanding the region’s complex political, cultural, and economic history. The state groupings studied in this volume include Israel and Iran; Iran and Saudi Arabia; Iran and Turkey; Iran, Iraq, and Syria; Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and Algeria and Morocco. Essays are theoretically driven, breaking the MENA region down into a collection of systems that exemplify how state and nonstate actors interact around certain issues. Through this approach, contributors shed rare light on the origins, persistence, escalation, and resolution of MENA rivalries and trace significant patterns of regional change. Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa makes a major contribution to scholarship on MENA antagonisms. It not only addresses an understudied phenomenon in the international relations of the MENA region, it also expands our knowledge of rivalry dynamics in global politics.

Author: Adel Abdel Ghafar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 075564185X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
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.

Author: Karim Mezran
Publisher: Ledizioni
ISBN: 8855265814
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
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?

Author: William R. Thompson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811666717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Strategic rivalries are contests between states that view one another as threatening competitors and treat each other as enemies. A disproportionate amount of interstate conflict is generated by a relatively small number of these pairs of states engaged in rivalries that can persist for years. Thus, to understand interstate peace and conflict, it is useful to know how rivalries work in general and more specifically. In the past two decades, a strenuous effort has been mounted to introduce the concept of rivalry and demonstrate its utility in unraveling conflict situations. Yet all rivalries are not exactly alike. We need to move to a more rewarding differentiation of how they differ in general. Principal rivalries are those antagonisms that are most significant to the decision makers in a state. The main distinction on issues about which rivals dispute are positional and spatial concerns. Positional rivalries contend over regional and global influence. Spatial rivals contend over which state deserves to control disputed territory. Interventionary rivalries predominate in sub-Saharan Africa. Their primary focus involves neighboring states attempting to influence who rules and how co-ethnics are treated. This book updates the inventory of strategic rivalries from 1816 to 2020. Principal rivalries are identified for the first time and cover the same period. A theory stressing the two main types of rivalry (positional and spatial) is elaborated and tested. Regional variations on the origins and terminations of spatial rivalry are explored and interpreted. In addition, attention is paid to fluctuations in the intensity of positional rivalries by examining the working of the contemporary major power triangle (United States, Soviet Union/Russia, and China) and, more generally, the dynamics of regional power that are rising in terms of their relative capability and status in the system. Variations in cooperation and termination dynamics both in general and according to rivalry type are also examined. Overall, the emphases of the book are split between demonstrating the utility of distinguishing among rivalry types and examining selected rivalry dynamics.

Author: Marwan Kabalan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755655222
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This study offers an analysis of Qatar's foreign policy since its independence from Britain in 1971. Locked between two vying powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and lacking the traditional elements of influence in the regional and international state system such as land, human capital, and advanced industry, Qatar nevertheless wields a disproportionately large amount of regional influence with an assertive foreign policy approach. Here, Marwan Kabalan highlights the strategies pursued by the ruling Qatari elite, especially during the last two decades, and delves into the methods Qatar has used to deal with the structural challenges to its foreign policy. These strategies include financially leveraging its access to crucial resources, such as natural gas, and its manipulation of existing regional frictions. The book also addresses Qatar's soft power influence – positioning itself as an alternative cultural and intellectual hub in the Arab world, enabling it to take a leading role, particularly as a mediator, in the region. By highlighting Qatar's foreign policy strategies and outcomes, Kabalan illustrates how the Qatari case challenges key assumptions of international relations theory which assumes that wealthy small powers tend to pursue passive foreign policies, and that structural forces minimize the role of ruling elites in foreign policymaking.

Author: Binnur Özkeçeci-Taner
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031358597
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book brings together an all-women group of scholars to provide a historically grounded and theoretically rich examination of the continuities and changes in Turkey’s foreign policy since the Republic's establishment in 1923. Using different International Relations theories, clarifying the interaction between domestic politics and foreign policymaking, the book charts the evolution of Turkey’s foreign policy vis-a-vis several regions and global actors and examines the major developments in Turkey’s relations with these actors. Some chapters emphasize the continuities in Turkey’s external relations, and others examine the significant changes and discontinuities in certain areas. Recognizing that Turkey’s state interests may not always coincide with the interests of the ruling elite, the book demonstrates that the centennial birthday of Turkey represents a constitutive moment for Turkey’s future and calls for a pragmatic, as opposed to a completely ideologically-based, grand strategy that should focus on progressive ideals.

Author: Brian C. H. Fong
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040088554
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition is a comprehensive, pioneering, and interdisciplinary guide of this re-emerging field. Offering a team of cutting-edge researchers in the field, it advances an analytical framework of great power competition. It surveys the major theories (mainstream and critical), actors (state, quasi-state, and non-state), mechanisms (military, economic, and ideational influence), and domains (territorial and non-territorial) pertaining to contemporary great power competition. This Handbook is an essential text for scholars and students of international relations, security studies, global governance, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to global policy makers and practitioners who need to observe contemporary great power competition.

Author: William R. Thompson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819905575
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This edited book complements and follows up on the book, Thompson and Volgy et al, Regions, Power and Conflict: Constrained Capabilities, Hierarchy, and Rivalry. It is predicated in part on the paucity of published material available on comparing regional international politics. Monadic, dyadic, and systemic approaches all have their uses and have been exploited extensively. The same cannot be said about comparative regional analysis. The premise is that a great deal of international politics takes place within regional parameters. Most states simply lack the capability or interest in devoting many resources to extra-regional affairs. Yet each region is distinctive. In some, military coups remain common while they have died out as a form of political practice in others. A few have been highly conflictual and then become more pacific, while others persist in their conflict intensity. Some have powerful neighbors with intervention tendencies, while others are surrounded by relatively weak states. Some are rich; others are poor. The point is that regions, all with proper names, have attributes that can be harnessed through comparison to explain why regional behavior differs greatly across the planet. The aim is to replace the proper names with the leading variables that appear to drive behavior. For instance, to shrug and say “that’s the Middle East for you” does not take us very far. Replacing the Middle East label with conceptualization about how a set of small, weak, autocratic states behave subject to high penetration by major powers might take us farther than shrugging off regional identity. We have good reasons to think that comparative regional analysis can deliver an explanatory value-added product just as much as alternative “levels of analysis” can. Ultimately, we might desire to integrate separate levels of analysis, rather than segregating them. But in the short term, we need to encourage comparative regional analysis because it is the least developed perspective. Why that might be the case can be debated, but it stems in part from our disciplinary tendencies for some analysts to specialize in regional behavior largely in a descriptive vein while others prefer to focus on explaining universal behavior. Comparative regional behavior tends to be squeezed out by regional scholars who suspect generalization about behavior and universal scholars who suspect particular contexts such as regions. Comparative regional analysis requires analysts who are willing to explore generalization but acknowledge regional contexts more explicitly than is customary. At the same time, more general substitutes for those regional labels must be introduced if explanatory headway is to be achieved.

Author: Šumit Ganguly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009193538
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Draws on theoretical literature on international rivalries to explain the origins and evolution of the Sino-Indian rivalry.

Author: William R. Thompson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819914981
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Political shocks have come to be considered highly salient for explaining major changes to international politics and to the foreign policies of states. Such shocks can occur at all levels of analysis: domestically, dyadically, regionally, or globally. They range from political phenomena such as coups and wars to ecological catastrophes. These shocks are sufficiently disruptive to cause foreign policy makers to reconsider their foreign policy orientations and to contemplate major changes to their policies. In fact, some have argued that it is mostly through political shocks that fundamental policy change occurs in most states. No wonder then that political shocks are now increasingly part of the toolbox of considerations used by foreign policy and international relations scholars as they focus on understanding patterns of conflict and cooperation between states. Given the salience of political shocks to understand foreign policy change, this book brings together a group of both senior and more junior scholars whose previous work has shown substantial promise for moving forward theory and empirical analysis. Their combined efforts in this book highlight the value of multiple theoretical and empirical approaches to a clearer understanding of the nature of political shocks and their consequences for foreign policy and international politics.