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332 results in Middle East government, politics and policy

Page 1 of 17

Occupier and Occupied
  • Israel, Palestine, and Masculinities across the Divide
  • Chloe Skinner
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2025
    Print publication:
    30 April 2025
  • Working from the premise that gender and violence are cyclically related, masculinities' connection to power and violence are frequently simplistically assumed. Yet, amid ongoing colonisation and military occupation, there are other more complex dynamics simultaneously at play across Israel and Palestine. In this book, Chloe Skinner explores this, untangling the gendered politics of settler colonialism to shed specific light on the ways in which masculinities shift and morph in this context of colonial violence. Oscillating between analysis of Israeli militarism and military occupation in Palestine, each chapter examines the constitutive performance and negotiation of masculinised ideals across these colonial hierarchies. Masculinities are thus analysed across these settings in connection, rather than in isolation – illustrating that gendered identities, practices, and performances here are intertwined by that which simultaneously divides and separates them: the apartheid politics of the Israeli state.

The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel
  • Netanel Flamer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2025
    Print publication:
    31 January 2025
  • Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organisation Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas's intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew and English, Netanel Flamer analyzes the development of Hamas's various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas's activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

Constitution Building After the Arab Spring
  • A Comparative Perspective
  • Francesco Biagi
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2025
    Print publication:
    31 January 2025

The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran
  • Power, Institutions, and the Limits of Reform
  • Edited by Hadi Enayat, Mirjam Künkler
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2025
    Print publication:
    31 January 2025
  • After Iran's 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the secular legal system of the Pahlavis and pledged his commitment to distinctly Islamic conceptions of law and justice: the application of both the shariʿa and the rule of law (hākemiyat-e qānun) became major ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic. This precipitated the Islamization of the legal system, the judiciary and the courts, a process which still continues today and is the subject of intense ideological and political contestation. The Rule of Law in Iran is the first comprehensive analysis of judicial and legal institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in their social, political and historical contexts. Scholars and practitioners of law, many with experience of working in Iran, shed light on how the rule of law has fared across a variety of areas, from criminal law to labour law, family law, minority rights, policing, the legal profession, the visual and performing arts, trade law, and medicine.

Contesting Pluralism(s)
  • Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond
  • Nora Fisher-Onar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2024
    Print publication:
    31 December 2024
  • Beginning with the aftermath of the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey, Contesting Pluralism(s) challenges a widespread tendency to limit studies of Turkish-and Muslim-politics to 'Islamist vs. secularist' or 'Islam vs. democracy' debates. Instead, Nora Fisher-Onar's innovative argument centres coalitions for and against pluralism. Retelling Turkey's story from the late Ottoman empire to the present as a tale of pluralizing vs. anti-pluralist coalitions, this book offers an alternative explanation for major outcomes from revolutions to coup d'etats. Here, cross-camp alliances pit those who are willing to co-exist with 'Other(s)' against those who champion a unitary, national project in which everyone speaks, believes, looks and loves as they do. Drawing on a rich array of primary and secondary data, Fisher-Onar introduces an analytical framework for capturing causal complexity in political contestation. This study rejects Orientalist exceptionalism, re-reading the relationship between political religion, pluralism and populism via a framework which travels across and beyond the Muslim-majority world.

The New Israelis
  • Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism
  • Alex Weingrod
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2024
    Print publication:
    31 December 2024
  • Following successive immigration waves, the military occupation of the West Bank and the emergence of a high-tech based economy, Israeli society has become increasingly complex and divided. In this timely study, Alex Weingrod utilizes ground-breaking ethnographic research to unpack Israel's diverse communities and cultures, arguing that there are several different versions of “being Israeli” that influence and contest with one another. Covering a fascinating range of topics from shifting ethnic group identities to the reinvented Hebrew language and Israeli popular music, Weingrod discusses minority groups including Ethiopian Israelis, the LGBTQ community, migrant workers and the growing, changing Ultra-Orthodox haredi communities alongside Israeli Palestinians who are marginalized and yet resilient. Culminating in an analysis of the unprecedented 2023 political-cultural schism that divided the society between supporters and protesting opponents of government legislation, Weingrod brings the discussion of Israeli divisions, discontents, and paradoxes up to date.

The King Can Do No Wrong
  • Blame Games and Power Sharing in Authoritarian Regimes
  • Scott Williamson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2024

Polluted Politics
  • The Development of an Israeli-Palestinian E-Waste Economy
  • John-Michael Davis, Yaakov Garb
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2024
  • This book describes the politically charged afterlife of Israeli electronics gathered by and processed in a cluster of rural Palestinian villages that has emerged as an informal regional e-waste hub. As with many such hubs throughout the global South, rudimentary recycling practices represent a remarkable entrepreneurial means of livelihood amidst poverty and constraint, that generates staggering damage to local health and the environment, with tensions between these reaching a breaking point. John-Michael Davis and Yaakov Garb draw on a decade of community-based action research with and within these villages to contextualise the emergence, realities and future options of the Palestinian hub within both the geo-political realities of Israel's occupation of the West Bank as well as shifting understandings of e-waste and recycling dynamics and policies globally. Their stories and analysis are a poignant window into this troubled region and a key sustainability challenge in polarized globalized world.

Tehran's Borderlines
  • Urban Development and Public Life in Contemporary Iran
  • Jaleh Jalili
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2024
  • Tehran has changed in recent decades. Rapid urban development through the expansion of subway lines, highways, bridges, and tunnels, and the emergence of new public spaces have drastically reshaped the physical spaces of Tehran. As the city changes, so do its citizens, their social relations, and their individual and collective perceptions of urban life, class, and culture. Tehran's Borderlines is about the social relations that are interrupted, facilitated, forged, and transformed through processes of urban development. Focusing on the use of public spaces, this book provides an analysis of urban social relations in the context of broader economic, cultural, and political forces. The book offers a narrative of how public spaces function as manifestations of complex relations among citizens of different backgrounds, between citizens and the state, and between forces that shape the physical realities of spaces and the conceptual meanings that citizens create and assign to them.

Late Ottoman Gaza
  • An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation
  • Yuval Ben-Bassat, Johann Buessow
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2024
  • In contemporary public discourse, Gaza tends to be characterized solely as a theatre of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. However, little is known about Gaza's society, politics, economy, and culture during the Ottoman era. Drawing on a range of previously untapped local and imperial sources, Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Buessow explore the city's history from the mid-nineteenth century through WWI. They show that Gaza's historical importance extends far beyond the territory of the 'strip' since the city was an important hub for people, goods, and ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean from Antiquity until the twentieth century. Using new digital methodologies, Ben-Bassat and Buessow introduce readers to the world of Gazans from various walks of life, from the traditional Muslim elites to the commoners and minority communities of Christians and Jews. In so doing, they tell the lively story of this significant but frequently misunderstood city.

Refining the Common Good
  • Oil, Islam and Politics in Gulf Monarchies
  • Miriam R. Lowi
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2024
  • How has Islam as a set of beliefs and practices shaped the allocation of oil revenues in Arab Gulf monarchies? In turn, how has oil wealth impacted the role of Islamic doctrine in politics? Refining the Common Good explores the relationship between Islamic norms and the circulation of oil wealth in Gulf monarchies. The study demonstrates how both oil (revenues) and Islam (as doctrine) are manipulated as tools of state power, and how religious norms are refined for the sake of achieving narrow secular interests. Miriam R. Lowi examines different institutionalized practices financed by hydrocarbon revenues and sanctioned, either implicitly or explicitly, by Islam, and uses evidence from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia to show how these practices are infused with political purpose. The dynamic relationship between oil wealth and Islamic doctrine is exploited to contribute to the management and control of society, and the consolidation of dynastic autocracy.

Tunisian Politics in France
  • Long-Distance Activism since the 1980s
  • Mathilde Zederman
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2024
    Print publication:
    07 November 2024
  • What does it mean to oppose or support an authoritarian regime from afar? During the years of Ben Ali's dictatorship in Tunisia between 1987 and 2011, diaspora activism played a key role in the developments of post-independence Tunisian politics. Centring this study on long-distance activism in France, where the majority of leftist and Islamist exile groups took refuge, Mathilde Zederman explores how this activism helps to shed new light on Tunisia's political history. Tunisian Politics in France closely explores the interactions and conflicts between different constellations of pro-regime and oppositional actors in France, examining the dynamics of what the author persuasively describes as a 'trans-state space of mobilisation'. In doing so, Zederman draws attention to the constraints and possibilities of long-distance activism. Utilising material gathered from extensive fieldwork in France and Tunisia, this study considers how the evolution of diaspora activism both challenges and reinforces the boundaries of Tunisian politics.

Civic Death in Contemporary Turkey
  • Mass Surveillance and the Authoritarian State
  • Seçkin Sertdemir
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2024
  • What does it mean for a government to declare its citizens 'dead' while they still live? Following the failed 2016 coup, the Turkish AKP government implemented sweeping powers against some 152,000 of its citizens. These Kanun hükmünde kararnameli ('emergency decreed') were dismissed from their positions and banned for life from public service. With their citizenship also revoked, Seçkin Sertdemir argues these individuals were rendered into a state of 'civic death'. This study considers how these authoritarian securitisation methods took shape, shedding light on the lived experiences of targeted people. Bringing together approaches from political philosophy, social anthropology, and sociology, Sertdemir outlines the approaches and justifications used by the Turkish government to dismiss opponents, increase surveillance, and brand citizens as 'terrorists'. At the same time, extensive archival research and in-depth interviews bring focus to the impact of these measures on the lives of women, and the disabled and LGBTQ+ communities.

Millennial Dreams in Oil Economies
  • Job Seeking and the Global Political Economy of Labour in Oman
  • Crystal A. Ennis
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2024
  • This book shifts the analysis of economic development in Oman from the traditional focus on oil to the perspective of labour. Focusing on the experiences of workers, jobseekers, and the governance of labour markets, Crystal A. Ennis offers a fresh perspective on regional development and rentier neoliberalism in the Gulf. Highlighting Oman's position within global capitalism, Ennis makes a compelling case for de-exceptionalising the Gulf, arguing that the region's labour markets are global and subject to similar pressures as other global economies. Moving beyond oil also allows Ennis to focus on the social conditions of Oman, where over sixty four percent of the population are under the age of thirty. Ennis offers a rich analysis of historical lineages of labour governance, class formation; and, following protests after 2011 as youth unemployment soared in the region, how authoritarian states react to public pressure and social unrest around perceived economic decline.

Foreign in Two Homelands
  • Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History
  • Michelle Lynn Kahn
  • Published online:
    31 August 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2024
  • What happens when migrants are rejected by the host society that first invited them? How do they return to a homeland that considers them outsiders? Foreign in Two Homelands explores the transnational history of Turkish migrants, Germany's largest ethnic minority, who arrived as 'guest-workers' (Gastarbeiter) between 1961 and 1973. By the 1980s, amid rising racism, neo-Nazis and ordinary Germans blamed Turks for unemployment, criticized their Muslim faith, and argued they could never integrate. In 1983, policymakers enacted a controversial law: paying Turks to leave. Thus commenced one of modern Europe's largest and fastest waves of remigration: within one year, 15% of the migrants—250,000 men, women, and children—returned to Turkey. Their homeland, however, ostracized them as culturally estranged 'Germanized Turks' (Almancı). Through archival research and oral history interviews in both countries and languages, Michelle Lynn Kahn highlights migrants' personal stories and reveals how many felt foreign in two homelands. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

UN Mediators in Syria
  • The Challenges and Responsibilities of Conflict Resolution
  • Fadi Nicholas Nassar
  • Published online:
    16 May 2024
    Print publication:
    23 May 2024
  • Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has been one of the most catastrophic conflicts of our time and a dark stain on the peacemaking abilities of the United Nations (UN). At the heart of this book is a simple but critical question – what do UN mediators tasked with the responsibility to make peace actually do? By explaining this, the book offers a detailed record of what Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Staffan de Mistura did in their roles as UN mediators in Syria and presents a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that shaped their decision-making. Beyond the cases of these three mediators, Fadi Nicholas Nassar introduces a method by which to forensically identify a mediator's fingerprints on the peacemaking process and charts a map to examine their decision-making processes. In doing so, it paves the way to evaluate the performance of these mediators – to hold them accountable for their successes and failures.

How Islam Rules in Iran
  • Theology and Theocracy in the Islamic Republic
  • Mehran Kamrava
  • Published online:
    02 May 2024
    Print publication:
    09 May 2024
  • This study provides a comprehensive examination of the evolution of Islam as a ruling framework in postrevolutionary Iran up to the present day. Beginning with the position and structure of Iran's clerical establishment under the Islamic Republic, Kamrava delves into the jurisprudential debates that have shaped the country's political institutions and state policies. Kamrava draws on extensive fieldwork to examine various religious narratives that inform the basis of contemporary Iranian politics, also revealing the political salience of common practices and beliefs, such as religious guardianship and guidance, Islam as a source of social protection, the relationship between Islam and democracy, the sources of divine and popular legitimacy, and the theoretical justifications for religious authoritarianism. Providing access to many Persian-language sources for the first time, Kamrava shows how religious intellectual production in Iran has impacted the ongoing transformation of Iranian Shi'ism and ultimately underwritten the fate of the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu vs The Generals
  • The Battle for Israel's Future
  • Guy Ziv
  • Published online:
    11 January 2024
    Print publication:
    18 January 2024
  • Benjamin Netanyahu has carefully cultivated a self-image as Israel's 'Mr. Security' during his decades of political activity. His reputation as a security-minded leader has resonated with large swathes of the Israeli public, enabling him to become Israel's longest-serving prime minister. Yet the Israeli security community has long questioned Netanyahu's approach to national security. The Netanyahu era has seen unprecedented civil-military tensions, while retired generals and former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies, some of whom were appointed by Netanyahu, have publicly rejected both his leadership and his policies. Drawing on interviews with dozens of senior veterans of the Israeli security establishment, this book addresses this intriguing paradox. It sets out to explain the mutual distrust and intense disagreements between Netanyahu and the security community, as well as the underlying reasons behind the Israeli public's inattention to the collective judgment of hundreds of ex-generals and former spymasters.

Mobility Economies in Europe's Borderlands
  • Migrants' Journeys through Libya and the Mediterranean
  • Marthe Achtnich
  • Published online:
    12 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023
  • The arrival of unauthorised migrants at the shores of southern Europe has been sensationalized into a migration 'crisis' in recent years. Yet, these depictions fail to grasp migrants' experiences and fall short of addressing a more complex phenomenon. In this original ethnography, Marthe Achtnich examines migrants' journeys and economic practices underpinning mobility to recast how we think of migration. Bringing the perspectives and voices of migrants to the fore, she traces sub-Saharan migrants' journeys along one of the world's most dangerous migration routes: through the Sahara Desert, Libya, and then by boat to Malta in Europe. Examining what she calls 'mobility economies', Achtnich demonstrates how these migrant journeys become sources of profit for various actors. By focusing on migrants' long and difficult journeys, the book prompts a necessary rethinking of mobile life, economic practices under contemporary capitalism, and the complex relationship between the two.

The Cultural Politics of Art in Iran
  • Modernism, Exhibitions, and Art Production
  • Katrin Nahidi
  • Published online:
    07 September 2023
    Print publication:
    21 September 2023
  • Modernist Iranian art represents a highly diverse field of cultural production deeply involved in discussing questions of modernity and modernization as practiced in Iran. This book investigates how artistic production and art criticism reflected upon the discourse about gharbzadegi (westoxification), the most substantial critique of Iran's adaptation of Western modernity, and ultimately proved to be a laboratory for the negotiation of an anti-colonial concept of an Iranian artistic modernity, which artists and critics envisioned as a significant other to Western colonial modernity. In this book, Katrin Nahidi revisits Iranian modernist art, aiming to explore a political and contextualized interpretation of modernism. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, Nahidi provides a history of modernist art production since the 1950s and reveals the complex political agency underlying art historiographical processes. Offering a key contribution to postcolonial art history, Nahidi shows how Iranian artistic modernity was used to flesh out anti-colonial concepts and ideas around Iranian national identity.

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