Overlapping Contests and Middle East International Relations: The Return of the Weak Arab State (original) (raw)

IR in the Middle East: foreign policy analysis in theoretical approaches

International Relations, 2019

Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politics orientation in IRME. We argue that this scholarship ignores work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with its psychological-oriented and agent-based dimensions and that this constitutes a missed opportunity for the study of the region. The article offers suggestions for incorporating FPA research into IRME and argues that an FPA perspective offers an alternative and complementary approach to the eclectic frameworks predominant in the scholarship on IRME.

Studying Middle Eastern International Relations through IR Theory

Ortadoğu Etütleri (Middle Eastern Studies) [Turkey] , 2011

The discipline of International Relations (IR) and the field of Middle East studies are often considered worlds apart, with little common ground between them. Today this characterization is too stark, but it is true that more work needs to be done to bring the two together, and particularly to bring the Middle East more into the center of IR theory development. This article argues that although IR scholarship does pay some—if not enough—attention to the region, it is in pedagogy that almost no effort is made to do so. Our university and college courses must do more to apply IR approaches and models to the Middle East, to show students how the former work and what the latter can contribute to it. Below four paradigms are suggested as ways to do so, including questions students can be made to think about to demonstrate why and how the two areas can be combined to further both our understanding of the region and our efforts to develop IR theory.

Mirages and Skirmishes: Demystifying the Politics of the Middle East

The international community treats the Middle Eastern political situation like one would a landmine. Gingerly, cautiously and dangerously are the three watchwords for diplomacy in this region and with good reason. The Middle East, in its dealings with the international system also defies convention in many cases. The convention we speak of is the basic system of functioning for the nation-state actor in today’s scenario. Most of these systems in a similar vein can arguably be attributed to American influence, for the international system is very much American in most of the ideologies it purports. This paper will examine the Middle East in the light of this system in order to state the challenges it poses which may hamper the smooth functioning of the same. To understand the relationships the region has with the international community, this paper will detail the situations of certain key actors in the region. Delving into their domestic politics and governing ideologies for a solid background, this paper will further examine the political and economic ties these actors share with one another. This analysis will serve as a foil to examine these relationships in a global light, with the strategic dimension delving into political relationship and the economic dimension detailing the impact of certain commodities (namely oil and opium) globally and locally. With this base, we can then establish the links between Middle Eastern activity and its threats to the international system as defined by America and the world.

Global/Regional IR and changes in global/regional structures of Middle East international relations

POMEPS Studies 34: Shifting Global Politics and the Middle East , 2019

The overall theme for this collection concerns the question about how changes in international structures at both the global and regional levels have and will affect Middle East international relations. One way to approach this question is by engaging in a discussion about whether the Middle East is in a transition from a post-Cold War ‘American order’ to some kind of ‘post-American’ (dis)order, where not only regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia but also non-Western great powers such as Russia and China aspire for a larger role in regional politics. In the following, a related yet somewhat different approach will be adopted. I will focus less on international relations than on the academic field of IR and discuss what these changes ‘out there’ might mean for the study of Middle East international relations ‘in here.’ In the following, I will do this by (re)visiting two debates in the scholarship on (Middle East) international relations. see also https://pomeps.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/POMEPS\_Studies\_34\_Web.pdf

PSPA 311 International Politics and the Middle East (readings)

This seminar explores how the politics of the Middle East, US policy in the Middle East, and the Middle East as a regional system have been understood and represented through the lens of international relations theory and scholarship. The seminar develops a multilayered approach to understanding the politics of security/insecurity and the shifting regional (dis)order by integrating the role of system-level global powers, regional and transnational actors, and domestic socio- economic and ideological forces to traces shifting patterns since the end of World War II.