Statecraft in the Middle East

ISBN: 9781784535803 出版年：2016 页码：289 Imad Mansour Bloomsbury Publishing

What role do ideas play in state-building and state activity? Thisbook argues that government policies in both foreign relationsand domestic politibe 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 Easthby 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 secotwentieth 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.