Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa

Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine issue-driven antagonisms within groups of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states and their impact on relations within the region. The volume also considers how shock events, such as internal revolts and regional wars, can alter interstate tensions and the trajectory of conflict.

MENA has experienced more internal rivalries than any other region, making a detailed analysis vital to understanding the region's complex political, cultural, and economic history. The state groupings studied in this volume include Israel and Iran; Iran and Saudi Arabia; Iran and Turkey; Iran, Iraq, and Syria; Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and Algeria and Morocco. Essays are theoretically driven, breaking the MENA region down into a collection of systems that exemplify how state and nonstate actors interact around certain issues. Through this approach, contributors shed rare light on the origins, persistence, escalation, and resolution of MENA rivalries and trace significant patterns of regional change.

Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa makes a major contribution to scholarship on MENA antagonisms. It not only addresses an understudied phenomenon in the international relations of the MENA region, it also expands our knowledge of rivalry dynamics in global politics.

Imad Mansour is an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University and a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute (Washington, DC). He is the author of Statecraft in the Middle East: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and Security.

William R. Thompson is Distinguished Professor and Donald A. Rogers Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Indiana University, editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, and an affiliated professor at the University of Washington.