Moodle 201516
This course surveys political systems, movements, conflicts and trends in the contemporary Middle East. It explores the international and regional context of current problems and conditions, including the process of state formation, variations in regime consolidation and state-society relations, regional rivalries and conflicts, the Islamist challenge, the political economy of development, and democracy and civil society.

The course begins with a consideration of comparative analysis and cultural interpretation, and a general survey of the region’s religious and ethnic-cultural diversity. It then reviews (1) the political and historical background of the contemporary Middle Eastern states system (the birth and spread of Islam, the Ottoman Empire, and the construction of the states system that succeeded it), (2) region-wide political, socio-economic, and ideological developments after 1945; and a series of conflicts that reveal many different dimensions of regional politics: the Arab-Israeli wars and other regional conflicts, the Islamist challenge, the ‘Arab Spring’ and other recent developments.