Statecraft in the Middle East: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and Security

By Imad Mansour

What role do ideas play in state-building and state activity? Thisbook argues that government policies in both foreign relationsand domestic politics must always be situated within a broaderideational and societal context. Imad Mansour analyses how governments in thecontemporary Middle East have governed internally and acted externally basedon societal narratives, which bring together a variety of ideas about a society'shistory and place in the world. He argues that there is a dominant societalnarrative that acts as a primary building block of statecraft, where statecraftis understood as an ongoing set of local, regional and global state-buildingprocesses. Mansour investigates the ways in which statecraft in the Middle Easthas been guided by narratives through a close historical reading and comparativediscussion of the political activity of six states - Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran - in the second half of the twentieth century and the earlytwenty-first century. His book demonstrates the analytical power of narrativesin understanding statecraft and explains why governments' decisions need to beunderstood in complex ways.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 178453580X
• ISBN13: 9781784535803
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.6"