The paper entertains the proposition that regional instability in the MENA region and the declining power of the nation-states can be largely attributed to globalization. It claims that traditional regulatory functions of the state have been overwhelmed by global economic and political interconnectedness. Simultaneously, globalization has nurtured an environment that has expedited the fast growth of transnational movements, particularly that of communitarian discourse emerging in most fragmented states, substituting for declining state power. A ‘globalization double movement’ has come to articulate contemporary political developments, particularly by events associated with the Arab Spring. The fallout of national autocratic states and the rise of a communitarian transnational movements can be highly associated with the double movement. This paper gathers economic, political, and security evidences that point to globalization’s dramatic impacts on the structural deteriorations of Arab nation-states and the rise of communitarianism. Economic indicators such as the trade balance of major productive sectors in Arab countries are employed to demonstrate growing exposure to foreign imports and market interconnectedness. Examination of major rising political movements throughout the Arab countries also demonstrate growing transnational communitarian allegiance along cultural, economic, and military affiliations. Thus, the main predicament confronting most Arab societies remains that of establishing alternative governing foundations that can help prevent the growing rifts between communities and scaffold state fragility. This paper relies on comparative research in order to reveal potential foundations of a post-Realism Arab state compatible with globalization’s double movement. The findings indicate that the restructuring of state foundations must complement communitarian diversity while transcending 'sovereignty' beyond territoriality. Power sharing that preserves communitarian political autonomies with margins of cultural and economic affiliations extending beyond the confinement of state borders illustrates compatibility with globalization’s double movement. Various countries including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Egypt, and Yemen are examined in this study to contextualize such a proposition.

In Arab nations such as Morocco, Jordan, and Tunisia, the quota system has provided an effective means to increase the political representation of women in the state. In these non-sectarian Muslim-majority countries, the quota system has enabled women to demonstrate their great competency through public service. In this presentation, I will contrast political representation by women in these non-sectarian states to the dismal standing of women in sectarian countries such as Iraq and Lebanon. It draws upon the role played by women’s quotas in Iraq following the 2003 US invasion, and the similar status of women in politics in the non-quota state of Lebanon, to question the efficacy of quota use in sectarian countries where politicians are more often representative of their sect than their class or gender. It also outlines the importance of external actors in ensuring the deployment of state feminism not only in authoritarian Arab states but also in sectarian states such as Iraq after 2003. In a sectarian state like Iraq the quota has been enacted through a patrimonial system where women’s public service is shackled to a confessional leader rather than to serving the public good. Furthermore, any of the localized benefits that might accrue from having a quota system within the sect, have been diminished by the roll back of progressive laws implemented by the pre-invasion secular state. The enactment of a quota system for women has become a regular part of political discourse in Lebanon with the hope that it will improve the limited role that Lebanese women have in the political sphere. I will argue that the Iraq case demonstrates the likely shortcomings of this approach in a state where political power is likewise enacted within a system where allegiance is to powerful and often regressive political leaders.

The Arab uprisings have rekindled interest in "reviving" an "Islamic state". But long before 2011, contemporary Islamists have expended considerable ink on the notion of the “Islamic state”, elaborating on its origins, guiding principles and organization, and its relationship with non-Muslim states and peoples. This paper examines the conceptualizations of the "Islamic state" by four well-known Arab Islamist scholars: The Egyptian Mohammad Abu Zahra (1898-1974), Mahmoud Shaltut (1893-1963), and Yusuf Qaradawi (1926- ); and the Syrian Wahbah al-Zuhaili (1932-2015). Based on a close analysis of the discourses of these scholarly-sheikhs, I contend that they largely fail to provide clear and internally consistent answers to four key questions. First, does the “Islamic state” presently exist, or is it yet to be established; and if the latter is the case then by whom and how? Second, was the historic caliphate which allegedly extended from the death of the Prophet Muhamad in 632 until the Ottoman caliphate’s dissolution in 1923 an “Islamic state”? Third, is the “Islamic state” universal in scope, or can there be several Islamic states at the same time? Fourth, what is the relationship between the “Islamic state” and Islamic unity; and can the latter be achieved outside the context of the “Islamic state”? After providing a detailed critique of the answers they provide to the above four questions, I argue that the persistent ambiguities surrounding the notion of the “Islamic state” emanate from a political reading of the Quranic verses that refer to the Muslims as one Umma; particularly verse 21: 92 “This then is your Umma, a single Umma”. This paper makes two important and overlapping claims. First, contemporary Islamists construe the unity of the Muslim Umma, primarily in material/political terms (i.e. physical unity), rather than in emotive terms (i.e. feelings of compassion towards and solidarity with fellow Muslims). Second, their conceptualizations of the “Islamic state” are heavily influenced by “modern”/European ideas about the nation-state as a sovereign entity with authority over its citizens and territory. I conclude that the “Islamic state”— as imagined by contemporary Islamists – is a stillborn idea as it is a hybrid of two highly incompatible sets of genes: the Islamic tradition, which does not conceive the Umma in territorial terms, and the “modern”/ European notion of the territorial state. In sum, the “Islamic state” is not a plausible alternative to the troubled nation-state in the post-Arab Spring world.

This paper discusses how displacement crises have shaped the notion of statehood and governance in the Arab region after the Arab uprisings. It draws on the case of Lebanon’s coping mechanism with Syria’s refugee flows, and investigates how displacement has interacted with the Lebanese state and shaped its features, namely the conceptions of sovereignty, governmental institutions, political and public spheres. The paper starts by taking an inward-looking approach. It looks at how Lebanon’s governmental institutions, political elite and public spheres have responded to forced migration flows. It describes how Syria’s refugee surge has prompted the formulation of new, albeit incoherent policy processes, and has enmeshed the political elite and public spheres into polarities around the theme of solidarity. Focusing on the political elite’s conceptions of Lebanese statehood, it will show how the crisis has provoked contradictory narratives as to the degree to which it endangers the Lebanese state and its power sharing formula or not. Then, taking an outward-looking approach, the article inquires into how supranational and international organizations traditionally involved in the governance of migration in the region, namely the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have cooperated with the Lebanese state in its management of displacement flows. In this context, scholars and practitioners have been divided over the effects of the politics of funding on Lebanon’s state authority and dynamics. Politicization of aid, the EU’s refusal to channel aid directly to the government, and the proliferation of NGOS have fuelled debates about Lebanon’s waning of oversight capacity. At the same time, Lebanon’s stability in a ‘region on fire’, amid an unprecedented displacement crisis, have spurred debates about the resilience of the state. The paper contends that the refugee crisis has indeed posed significant challenges to Lebanon’s institutions, and to the culture of political accommodation upon which the state rests. At the same time, it has provided Lebanon’s political and public spheres with what I will frame as ‘opportunities of adaptability’, ones that allow rethinking the notion of governance, institutionalism and solidarity. From this perspective, the Lebanese case has broader lessons to convey. While Syria’s displacement crisis has been portrayed as a major challenge to Arab and European states, it has also provided an opportunity to align the modern notion of statehood with an increasingly globalized order in which displacement crises are an integral part of the inter-state system.

The ongoing transformations in the Arab region are reshaping the relationship between the citizen and the state. Following Randall Hansen, this paper argues that citizenship is the single most vital generator of rights in a nation-state, and that citizenship inclusion contributes to resolving long-standing political conflicts in the region. The paper examines the increasing risk of statelessness in the post-Arab Spring era. Statelessness, an extreme form of citizenship discrimination, denies individuals their basic rights to protection, education, healthcare, employment, housing, and freedom of movement. Nonetheless, there has been a lack of systematic research on statelessness. It is unsafe to investigate statelessness in tumultuous states such as Syria and access is restricted to researchers in the Gulf States. The rise of postcolonial nation-states and the redrawing of maps in the region have resulted in citizenship exclusion of several minority groups, including the Bedoon in Kuwait and the Gulf region. The Arab Spring led to the emergence of new forms of statelessness and galvanized the Bedoon in Kuwait to demand equal citizenship rights. However, the Kuwaiti government responded unfavorably to the Bedoon peaceful demonstrations and detained hundreds of protesters. Meanwhile, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, seeing new threats to their power emerge during the Arab Spring, implemented measures to contain dissidents, including increasingly stripping them of citizenship. In the ISIS-controlled areas of Syria, Iraq, and Libya, hundreds of children born there are having difficulties being officially registered by the government authorities, rendering them stateless. The situation of stateless people has been exacerbated by the unprecedented number of Syrian refugees. Children born in Lebanon to Syrian refugees face administrative impediments, and many of them remain stateless. The debilitating stigma of statelessness will marginalize these children and lead to more extremism and violence. While there have been some efforts by government authorities, such as the Ministry of Interior in Lebanon and Iraq, to register births of displaced populations, the region offers few legal protections. The compliance of Arab states with international legal norms governing statelessness remain weak, and most Arab countries are not signatories of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Nonetheless, international law provides an alternative source of rights that transcends the jurisdiction of individual nation-states.