Governance and National Security in the Arab World

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to governance and security in the contemporary Middle East. Students will be instructed in key developments in the modern history of countries in the region, built on two core building blocks that intersect as the course progresses. The first is a comparative study of the historical development of select Middle Eastern regimes with an eye to appreciating similarities and differences in the nations' political and socio-economic trajectories. The second block studies predominant security challenges in the Middle East, examining their relation to regional politics, as well as their greater impact on global security. Topics studied include, independence/post-independence conflicts and state formation, religious reform efforts and reasons for the predominance of political Islam, the challenge of 21st century media and technologies to authoritarian rule in light of the recent Arab Spring protests, as well as understanding the strategic importance of the region to U.S. interests and Western advanced conceptions of world order.