“The Inter-Arab System: Unity and Division From World War I to the ‘Arab Spring’”
Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, Graduate Seminar, Tel Aviv University, Spring 2016
This course seeks to understand one of the most important factors shaping the modern and contemporary politics of the Middle East: the complicated relationships between Arab countries and the interaction between inter-Arab dynamics and other dimensions of Middle Eastern political life such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, Great Power penetration and the rise of political Islam. Employing both “realist” and “constructivist” theories of international relations, it analyzes the evolution of the system from its infancy at the beginning of the 20th century through the pan-Arab heyday of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, the subsequent consolidation of a more normative state system, and its eventual, albeit partial undermining by the “Arab Spring” upheavals. In examining inter-Arab dynamics against the background of challenges posed from within the Arab world, by non-Arab regional actors — Israel, Turkey and Iran — and by great powers, the course seeks to understand matters such as the changing nature of modern Arab identity, Arab state formation, the effect of supranational and subnational ideologies on the behavior of Arab elites, and the underpinnings of the foreign policies of Arab states.
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