Prologue 1. States and Social Fields 2. Constructing the Middle East: International Anarchy, Indigenous Responses 3. The Late-forming State: Ontology, Dilemmas and Conditions of Survival 4. Saudi Arabia: The Survival of a Homogeneous State 5. Iraq: The Survival of a Divided State. Conclusion: Why do States Survive in the Middle East?
Biography
Adham Saouli is Lecturer of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. His main research interests are in state formation and behaviour in the Middle East.
"Saouli is tackling questions that have perplexed political scientists since the advent of the discipline and utilizing Middle Eastern cases to illuminate these conceptual puzzles…The book has many merits. It bridges the divide between comparative politics and international relations to produce research that is broadly relevant to a number of scholarly audiences… its main contribution is to show how "state formation is not a unilinear process" (p. 12). Saouli’s positioning of states on a formation/de-formation continuum is particularly creative (p. 13).…The book will be of interest not only to those studying Arab politics, but also to scholars interested in state weakness, variation in state capacity, and state collapse."
