State-Building in the Middle East and North Africa

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is Chair of the International History and Politics Department at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where he is also Professor of International History and Politics. He is the 2021 recipient of the International Studies Association (ISA) Global South Distinguished Scholar Award. He is the author of a trilogy on the post-9/11 world, Contre-Croisade - Le 11 Septembre et le Retournement du Monde (2004), Understanding Al Qaeda – Changing War and Global Politics (2011) and A Theory of ISIS - Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order (2018).

• Acknowledgements Foreword, Lisa AndersonPart One – Foundations and Legacies1. A Century of Elusive State-Building in the Middle East and North Africa: From the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Deal of the Century of 2020, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou2. “The Western Question”, Henry Laurens3. From the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire to the ‘Caliphate’ Redux: The Tortuous Journey of Arab Statehood, Benoît ChallandPart Two – Irresolution and Absences4. A State in Search of a Nation: The Case of Iraq, Faleh Abdel Jabar5. One Hundred Years of the Palestinian National Movement, Ahmad Samih Khalidi6. Permanent Irresolution of the Kurdish Question, Jordi TejelPart Three – Reinventions and Returns7. Egypt’s Post-Arab Spring Neo-Authoritarianism, Bruce Rutherford8. Armed Militancy and Alternative Statehood: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Rise of Revolutionary Islamism, François Burgat9. “Authoritarianism, Weakness and the New Great Game”, Bertrand Badie Conclusion, “Longing for the State, Mistrusting the State”, Ghassan Salamé

This timely book highlights the under-researched historical dimension of state-making and unmaking... respond[ing] successfully to the promise in [its] title. With this book's demonstration of historical legacies, MENA state-Building analysis is no longer the complex puzzle it was.