Providing comprehensive coverage of the history and role of the state in the Middle East and North African region, this handbook explores the main debates, theoretical approaches and accumulated empirical research to explain the remarkable resilience of MENA states despite continued conflict and instability.

Part I. Historical Context, State-Building and Politics in MENA 1. State, Revolution and War: Conflict and Resilience in MENA's States and States System 2. Historical Context of State Formation in the Middle East: Structure and Agency 3. States and State-building in the Middle East 4. Political Regimes of the Middle East and North Africa 5. Authoritarian Adaptability and the Arab Spring 6. The Arab Spring and the Gulf Monarchies 7. Leadership and Legitimacy in MENA Part II State Actors, Societal Context and Popular Activism 8. The Military in the Arab State 9. Tribes in MENA politics: The Levant Case 10. Political Parties in the Middle East 11. Islam and Islamic Movements and MENA Politics 12. Civil Society in the Middle East and North Africa 13. The Arab Spring Is Not Lost: Moral Protest as the Embodiment of a New Politics 14. Tunisia's "Civic Parallelism": Lessons for Arab Democratization Part III Trans-state Politics. The Political Economy and Identity Contexts 15. The Middle East and North Africa in the Lens of Marxist International Relations Theory 16. Oil and the Rentier State in the Middle East 17. Divergent Development in Egypt and the Gulf 18. Studying identity politics in Middle East international relations: before and after the Arab uprisings 19. Arab Nationalism: A Conceptual and Historical Reassessment Part IV. The International Politics of MENA 20. Conflict in the Middle East 21. Regionalism in the Middle East and North Africa 22. An exceptional context for a debate on international relations? Toward a synthetic approach to the study of the MENA's international politics 23. U.S. Hegemony and MENA 24. Alliances and the Balance of Power in the Middle East 25. War in the Middle East 26. International Relations of the Gulf: From Stable Rivalry to Spreading Instability