The states of the Middle East were not set down by Sykes and Georges-Picot or in Paris or San Remo. The line-up of polities in the region changed over time as some polities vanished and new ones appeared. Depending on criteria, between 31 and 68 autonomous territorial polities that existed in the region after 1914 disappeared. Some of these, such as the Kingdom of the Hijaz (1916-25), are well known and studied; others, such as Ras Al-Khaimah's brief stint as an independent state (1971-72), have been largely ignored. This paper defines the universe of these defunct states and develops a typology of how they "died," or vanished from the map. Building upon Davies's (2012) study of European polities that vanished, I identify six mechanisms of state death: implosion, conquest, merger, liquidation, 'infant mortality,' and collective abdication. The paper explains each of these mechanisms and uses case studies from five different decades (1920s-60s) and five extant states to demonstrate them. The cases are: The Tripolitanian Republic (1918-23, infant mortality); Hatay State (1937-39, collective abdication); The Republic of Mahabad (1946, conquest); The Tangier International Zone (1923-56, merger); and The United Arab Republic (1958-61, liquidation). I present data on the full list of defunct states and use GIS to map and display them. While the international relations literature on state death focuses on conquest, I find that relatively peaceful mergers are a common cause of state death in the MENA. No MENA states died via implosion or violent dissolution. Unless the Ottoman Empire is counted as a "defunct state," there is no regional precedent like the Soviet Union, Federation of Yugoslavia, or Austro-Hungarian Empire. The findings of the paper suggest that we cannot fully understand state-building in the Middle East by only looking at the states that exist today; we also need to identify and compare them with polities that existed but did not survive. The paper directly speaks to the MESA meeting theme of "Without Boundaries" by identifying historical incarnations of states and constructed boundaries that once existed and explaining the mechanism by which they vanished from the map.

This study aims to understand the causes of cooperation during transition processes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and their impact on transition outcomes. Even though the literature suggests that different patterns of cooperation among actors led to diverging transition outcomes in the MENA, we still do not know the causes behind these different patterns. This study moves away from cooperation during transitions and examines the underlying causes of these different patterns in order to explain the diverging transition outcomes. I argue that origins of a strategic cooperation during a transition, and a successful transition outcome in return, can be found in the period before the transition attempt. Cooperation during a transition requires the resolution of commitment problems among actors. If the main opposition actors build a successful coalition bloc and work against the regime together under authoritarianism, they develop common grounds, organizational and social capital, trust and a shared vision towards democracy building. Once a democratic transition process starts, these mechanisms provide a solution for commitment problems and facilitate cooperation as a transition strategy among these actors. Without these mechanisms, new rules and challenges of the transition process hinders such cooperation and a successful transition. The analysis of two failed (Algeria in the early 1990s and Egypt during the Uprisings) and one successful (Tunisia) transition attempts indicates that this pattern goes beyond the Arab Uprisings. In both Algeria and Egypt, the main opposition actors did not have a history of successful coalition building under authoritarianism. When the transition process started, groups could not overcome commitment problems and meet in a common goal. In Tunisia, on the other hand, the opposition actors from different ideological camps had a history of cooperation under Ben Ali regime and founded a strong inter-ideological coalition bloc named October 18 Collective. These experiences provided mechanisms to overcome the commitment problems and helped the parties to pursue cooperation as a strategy for transition. When transition process was in jeopardy, the past experience of coalition building and dialogue proved to be helpful to overcome challenges. This study is based on a 12-month fieldwork in Algiers, Tunis and Istanbul which includes over 100 interviews with primary and secondary actors and archival research as well as an original elite survey with experiments in Tunisia. The study combines experimental and qualitative evidence and meticulously links the experiences under authoritarianism to cooperation during transition using process tracing.

Focusing on Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Iraq, this paper asks: what explains differences in state repression among authoritarian regimes? Syria and Iraq under the presidencies of Hafez al-Assad (1971-2000) and Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) deployed highly lethal and indiscriminate violence, routinely executing political opponents. In contrast, authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia under the presidencies of Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011) and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (1987-2011) were relatively economical in their use of violence, primarily relying on harassment, intimidation and lengthy imprisonments rather than killings. What caused these differences? Why do we observe such stark variations in levels of state repression? This paper argues that these variations have roots in different legacies of European colonial rule. Where colonial rule was introduced earlier (1880s in Egypt and Tunisia), French and British colonial rulers erected centralized coercive organizations with relatively high capacities for gathering intelligence and neutralizing threats. However, where European rule was imposed later (1920s in Syria and Iraq), external rulers did not expect to stay long, and did not invest as extensively in building local coercive institutions, relying instead on regular military units to suppress incipient nationalist movements. I propose that these different colonial experiences explain differences in the security architectures of the four countries in the latter half of the 20th century, and their varying levels of violence. In Egypt and Tunisia, European colonialism produced security forces that were more centralized, with greater capacities to penetrate society, monitor opposition, and prevent challenges from escalating, which resulted in overall lower levels of violence. In Iraq and Syria, security services were divided among agencies that were assigned over- lapping tasks; these organizations competed in recruiting informants and outbid each other in repressing dissidents. The result was repression that was less targeted, less efficient and overall much more violent.

Why do authoritarian legislatures support regime durability? Existing literature focuses on country-level or case study data, but lacks detailed, within-country data on rent distribution to citizens needed to understand why authoritarian legislatures support regime durability. Drawing on original surveys from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan conducted 2007-2014, this paper shows that institutional setting and resource endowments systematically shape parliamentarian-citizen linkages and have implications for regime stability. Socially-embedded, personalistic linkages are more common in monarchies and oil rich economies than resource poor and single-party dominant regimes. Yet, non-personalistic, anonymous linkages are less effective than personalistic linkages in fostering citizen satisfaction with the government. By theorizing and empirically demonstrating variation in the social embeddedness of rent distribution, this paper extends literature on political clientelism, authoritarian institutions, and regime breakdown and helps explain why resource poor, single-party dominant regimes (Tunisia and Egypt) were vulnerable to regime collapse.