ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE EAST POLITICS Drawing on various perspectives and analysis, the Handbook problematizes Middle East politics through an interdisciplinary prism, seeking a melioristic account of the field. Thematically organized, the chapters address political, social, and historical questions by showcasing both theoretical and empirical insights, all of which are represented in a style that ease readers into sophisticated induction in the Middle East. It positions the didactic at the centre of inquiry. Contributions by forty-four scholars, both veterans and newcomers, rethink knowledge frames, conceptual categories, and fieldwork praxis. Substantive themes include secularity and religion, gender, democracy, authoritarianism, and new “borderline” politics of the Middle East. Like any field of knowledge, the Middle East is constituted by texts, authors, and readers, but also by the cultural, spatial, and temporal contexts within which diverse intellectual inflections help construct (write–speak) academic meaning, knowing, and practice. By denaturalizing notions of singularity of authorship or scholarship, the Handbook plants a dialogic interplay animated by multi-vocality, multi-modality, and multi-disciplinarity. Targeting graduate students and young scholars of political and social sciences, the Handbook is significant for understanding how the Middle East is written and re-written, read and re-read (epistemology, methodology), and for how it comes to exist (ontology). Larbi Sadiki is Professor of Arab Democratization at Qatar University. His blogs have appeared in Aljazeera, and his publications have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, and Portuguese. He is editor of the Routledge Series on Middle Eastern Democratization and Government, and has been a Non-resident Fellow at Carnegie Middle East Center (Beirut), Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, and an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney’s Department of Arabic Languages and Cultures. ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE EAST POLITICS Interdisciplinary Inscriptions Edited by Larbi Sadiki First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Larbi Sadiki; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Larbi Sadiki to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sadiki, Larbi, editor. Title: Routledge handbook of Middle East politics / Larbi Sadiki. Other titles: Handbook of Middle East politics Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019051246 (print) | LCCN 2019051247 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138047631 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315170688 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351692601 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781351692595 (epub) | ISBN 9781351692588 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Middle East—Politics and government—1979—Study and teaching. | Middle East—Social conditions—Study and teaching. | Middle East—Study and teaching. Classification: LCC DS61.8 .R68 2020 (print) | LCC DS61.8 (ebook) | DDC 956—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051246 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051 ISBN: 978-1-138-04763-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-17068-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC This book is dedicated to the Qatar University community CONTENTS List of figures xii List of tables xiii Notes on contributors xiv Acknowledgments xxii 1 Writing Middle East politics: A field in transit 1 Larbi Sadiki I Knowledge frames and horizons 19 2 Middle of where? East of what?: simulated postcoloniality’s assemblages, rhizomes, and simulacra 21 Larbi Sadiki 3 Travelling the Middle East without a map: three main debates 70 Bahgat Korany 4 Literature in the Arab postcolony 88 miriam cooke 5 The primacy of fieldwork: inductive explorations of the MENA state 102 Laurie A. Brand 6 Nationalism in the Arab Middle East: resolving some issues 113 James L. Gelvin vii Contents 7 Studying the international relations of the Arabian Peninsula/Persian Gulf: a personal account and a theoretical overview 127 F. Gregory Gause III 8 Committed history: sticking to facts and adhering to principles 139 Ilan Pappe 9 Reimagining the Middle East and its place in the world 154 Robert R. Bianchi II Towards re-conceptualizations of the democratic and the authoritarian 167 10 Survey research and the study of politics in the Arab world 169 Mark Tessler 11 Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa: the trajectories of the MENA republics 180 Raymond Hinnebusch 12 ‘Economic reform’ since the 1980s: the political corollaries of a political project 197 Eberhard Kienle 13 Overcoming exceptionalism: party politics and voting behaviour in the Middle East and North Africa 216 Francesco Cavatorta 14 Elections in authoritarian contexts: the case of Algeria 228 Youcef Bouandel III The secular and the religious: questions and contests 241 15 The challenges of researching political Islam 243 Beverley Milton-Edwards 16 The other side of Middle Eastern studies: on democracy, violence and Islam 256 Abdelwahab El-Affendi 17 Sectarian fault lines in the Middle East: sources of conflicts, or of communal bonds? 269 Keiko Sakai and Kota Suechika viii Contents 18 The unseen in the Islamic awakening: walking with the Muslim Jesus 281 Raymond William Baker 19 Re-thinking shīʿī political theology 292 Naser Ghobadzadeh 20 Patronage in reverse and the secular state in Egypt 304 Mohammed Moussa IV Gendered relations and realities: critical interpretations 317 21 Gender and politics in the Middle East 319 Nicola Pratt 22 Islam and resistance in the Middle East: a methodology of Muslim struggle and the impact on women 335 Maria Holt 23 Gender, religion, and politics in Jewish and Muslim contexts: the case of Israel 348 Lihi Ben Shitrit 24 Gender: still a useful category to analyze Middle East political history? A view from Egypt (1919–2019) 362 Lucia Sorbera V Borderline politics: claims and counter-claims 377 25 Social movement studies and the Middle East 379 Anne Marie Baylouny 26 Sports and politics: the turbulent world of Middle East soccer 394 James M. Dorsey 27 Various faces of violent radicalisation in the Syrian crisis: the case of Tripoli 405 Marie Kortam 28 Reconceiving the struggle between non-state armed organizations, the state and ‘the international’ in the Middle East 419 Marina Calculli ix