Contentious Politics in the Middle East

While the Arab people took center stage in the 'Arab Spring' protests, there is a growing tendency for academic studies to focus on the structure of the state, the nature of the regime, the militaries, and external powers to understand the limitations of popular uprisings in general in the Middle East. This project aims to redress this gap in focus. It analyzes the role and complexities of popular agency, without neglecting the interactions and negotiations between the people and the structural factors highlighted above, through the framework of contentious politics and social movement theory. The chapters in the book apply familiar questions raised by social movement theorists to the relatively under-researched case-study of the Middle East after the uprisings: why do some contentious politics emerge into social movements, while some of them fragment or are repressed? How and why do contentious politics differ? How have social movements changed, or been changed by, the political contexts within which they operate? How does contentious politics theory help us understand the recent events Middle East? Which are the limitations of contentious politics theory that these events have exposed? Edited by Fawaz A. Gerges and featuring insights from top scholars, this collection seeks to answer these important questions and push contentious politics theory forward.