The Routledge Handbook of Persian Gulf Politics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Persian Gulf politics, history, economics, and society. The volume begins its examination of Ottoman rule in the Arabian Peninsula, exploring other dimensions of the region’s history up until and after independence in the 1960s and 1970s. Featuring scholars from a range of disciplines, the book demonstrates how the Persian Gulf’s current, complex politics is a product of interwoven dynamics rooted in historical developments and memories, profound social, cultural, and economic changes underway since the 1980s and the 1990s, and inter-state and international relations among both regional actors and between them and the rest of the world. The book comprises a total of 36 individual chapters divided into the following six sections: Historical Context Society and Culture Economic Development Domestic Politics Regional Security Dynamics The Persian Gulf and the World Examining the Persian Gulf’s increasing importance in regional politics, diplomacy, economics, and security issues, the volume is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and policy makers interested in political science, history, Gulf studies, and the Middle East.

Divided into three sections, the Handbook of US-Middle East Relations provides a thorough and up-to-date overview of contemporary US-Middle East relations in historical perspective. With chapters contributed by leading experts in the field, this Handbook will be of use to academics, students and researchers in international relations, policy analysts, media professionals and government officials. Part I: Factors Affecting US Relations contains essays including Globalization, Energy Security, Wars and Revolution, Peace Processes, US Foreign Aid Policy to the Middle East, and US Relations with Islamic Groups in the Middle East. Part II: Perceptions of US Relations contains essays on how US policies are viewed, including The View from the Arab Street, The View from Palestine, The View from Pakistan and The View from Kurdistan. Part III: US Relations at the Country Level comprise essays detailing relations between the USA and countries and areas in the Middle East and North Africa, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Bahrain. A comprehensive index completes the volume.

This book offers a new perspective about the Gulf Arab states entering a post-oil era by looking at the political factors behind the green transformation. It discusses the recent ‘environmental enthusiasm’ in the oil- and gas-rich Gulf monarchies by asking how political power can be constituted through advocating environmental sustainability. While hydrocarbon-wealthy Gulf monarchies have been viewed as the globe’s ‘hydrocarbon powerhouse’ with an immense ecological footprint, efforts towards sustainability and environmental protection measures are increasingly monitored. Climate Change, environmental, degradation and the global pressure towards a low-carbon development are threatening the very basis of economic and political power of the oil- and gas-exporting Gulf monarchies. So far, discussions about this fundamental transformation have barely elaborated how it affects and reorganizes political power games in the region. This book attempts to overcome the dominant focus of techno economic drivers of change and uncovers how environmental sustainability impacts state-society and state-elite relationships as well as shaping regional and even global geopolitics.

A comprehensive examination of the nature of power in the Gulf, comparing and contrasting its origins, exercise and opposition in six Arab countries.

This book examines the security arrangements of the Persian Gulf, with a particular focus on Iran's security plans since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and follows it during Hassan Rouhani presidency. The book provides responses to the questions regarding the security plans of the Islamic Republic of Iran vis a vis the Persian Gulf and why the plans of the Rouhani government in this regard have not been welcomed by the countries of the region. It also analyses the security approach to establish comprehensive and lasting security in this region. Highlighting the importance of Iran's plans during Rouhani's presidency, the author indicates that it provides a codified and clear solution for achieving security in the region from the viewpoint of Iran. These plans have come closer to the logic of realism and has moved away from the idealism of the past plans. Seeking to create a balance against other actors in the region, Iran's plans are not welcomed by the region`s countries, because it seeks to bring other actors such as Russia and China to the Persian Gulf in order to balance against the United States. The book designs a security model for sustainable security in the Persian Gulf and how to achieve a model for regional dialogue. Comparing the transition to realistic logic in relation to other Iranian plans regarding the Persian Gulf, this book offers an innovative analysis of Iran's plans for the security of the Persian Gulf. It will be of interest to researchers in political science, International Relations, political geography, regional studies, security studies and Middle East Studies.

This exciting new edition of the successful textbook for students of Middle Eastern politics provides a highly relevant and comprehensive introduction to the complexities of a region in constant flux. Combining a thematic framework for examining patterns of politics with individual chapters dedicated to specific countries, the book places the very latest developments and long-standing issues within an historical context. This third edition extends its analysis to post-2015 developments in the region, as well as expanding the range of pedagogical features on offer. Presenting information in an accessible and inclusive format, the book offers: Coverage of the historical influence of colonialism and major world powers on the shaping of the modern Middle East A detailed examination of the legacy of Islam Analysis of the political and social aspects of Middle Eastern life, including alienation between the state and society, poverty and social inequality, and ideological crisis and renewal Case studies on countries in the Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine); the Northern Belt (Turkey and Iran); and those West and East of the Red Sea (Egypt and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council) A key introductory text for students of Middle Eastern politics and history at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels, this new edition has been extensively updated to also become a timely and significant reference for policy-makers and any motivated reader.

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).