Lexington Books
Pages: 230
•
Trim: 6 x 6
978-1-7936-0048-6 • Hardback • November 2019 • $95.00 • (£73.00)
978-1-7936-0050-9 • Paperback • June 2021 • $39.99 • (£31.00)
978-1-7936-0049-3 • eBook • November 2019 • $38.00 • (£29.00)
Uzi Rabi is director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African studies and senior researcher at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Chapter One: The Despotism of the Revolution
Chapter Two: On States and their Disintegration – An Anatomy of Failed States
Chapter Three: The Shi’i Revival – The Rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Chapter Four: The Islamic State: The Caliphate’s Iraqi Roots
Chapter Five: Arab Spring and Regional Politics
Chapter Six: The Middle East and Outside Powers
In a region proverbial for political turmoil the current decade has been particularly tumultuous. Professor Rabi takes the reader expertly through the complex history of The Arab Soring and its aftermath combining clarity with profound analysis. His book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the current state of the Middle East, the roots of its instability and its future prospects.
— Itamar Rabinovich, Tel Aviv University
The descent of Syria, Libya and Yemen into a ‘heart of darkness’ has shattered many Western preconceptions over what change can and should look across the Arab Middle East. In this penetrating new study, Professor Uzi Rabi argues that the West has failed to fully appreciate the gamut of primordial identities that can and indeed have usurped the appeal of a more liberal state-based order. Often provocative, but always informed, this book is a must for all those wishing to understand the mosaic of competing actors and social forces that now shape Arab dispensations across the Middle East.
— Clive Jones, University of Durham
Almost a decade on from the Arab Spring, Uzi Rabi presents a mature reflection on the changes – and the resistances to them – that it has inspired. He dispassionately shows that, despite the predictions of liberalization and a youth and social media-driven revolution, familiar patterns of social formation, religious and ethnic identity, and political culture have proven resilient within regional states, even as troubling constellations of interstate relations have emerged. The perspective he so adroitly presents is a sobering counterpoint to assumptions of, and prescriptions for, a ‘new Middle East’.
— James Piscatori, Australian National University, coauthor of Muslim Politics
Uzi Rabi undertakes to answer in this book the impelling question, how did the Middle East change following this dramatic eruption of the "Arab Spring" almost a decade ago. His knowledgeable and insightful response to the question covers such issues as the fragmentation of states, the widening of the sunni-shi'i schism, the expansion of Iranian intrusions, the vicissitudes of Islamist movements, the transformation of the regional system and the declining influence of the United States - all of which leading to the author's persuasive conclusion that new paradigms and roadmaps are now needed for comprehending this volatile and complex region.
— Shimon Shamir, Tel-Aviv University