Constructing International Relations in the Arab World [Hardcover]

This book explores the emergence of an anarchic states-system in the twentieth-century Arab world. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalist movements first considered establishing a unified regional arrangement to take the empire's place and present a common front to outside powers. But over time different Arab leaderships abandoned this project and instead adopted policies characteristic of self-interested, territorially limited states.

In his explanation of this phenomenon, the author shifts attention away from older debates about the origins and development of Arab nationalism and analyzes instead how different nationalist leaderships changed the ways that they carried on diplomatic and strategic relations. He situates this shift in the context of influential sociological theories of state formation, while showing how labor movements and other forms of popular mobilization shaped the origins of the regional states-system.

...This book is a useful contribution to the literature on international relations of the Middle East and points the way to future research on state formation in the region. The occasional contrast between the shortness of the book and the big questions it deals with does not take away from Lawson's excellent analysis of a crucial topic, both for the region and for international relations. He establishes a successful bridge between Arab studies and the various social sciences, and carries it out through solid research and a comparative study in five countries. As a result, the book is a milestone for students of both the Arab world and the discipline of international relations. This study shows how mutually antagonistic states took shape in the Arab world during the first half of the 20th century, and argues that process was driven by domestic political conflicts. Students of international politics generally throw up their hands at 'exotic' regions like the Middle East. Lawson's fine treatment reveals thatlS@