Exploring a new approach to interfaith/interreligious communication, the contributors to this collection seek to interact from the perspective of their own tradition or academic discipline with Ernest Becker's theory on the relationship between religion, culture, and the human awareness of death and mortality. While much interfaith/interreligious dialogue focuses on beliefs and practices, thus delineating areas of disagreement as a starting point, these chapters foster interactive communic...

Presenting a framework that incorporates macro-level forces into micro-level strategic calculations, this book explains key political choices by leaders and challengers in Pakistan through the political survival mechanism. It offers an explanation for continuing polity weakness in the country, and describes how political survival shapes the choices made by the leaders and challengers.Using a unique analysis that synthesizes theories of weak states, quasi-states and political surviv...

The work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom represents a distinctive contribution to the study of political economy, public policy and administration, collective action, and governance theory. Efforts to present a comprehensive overview of the Bloomington School that grew around the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (now renamed the Ostrom Workshop), which they founded more than 40 years ago, received new impetus with the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science to El...

Development analysts often focus on the role of “the state” in making the right rules by which to govern society, assuming that governance is exclusively or mainly the work of the central government authority. The reality in many developing countries, particularly those with weak central government authorities, is that governance happens through diverse rules and in many centers of decision-making, in ways that are formal and informal, official and unofficial. This real-world polycentricit...

While the outcomes of the tumultuous uprisings that continue to transfix the Arab world remain uncertain, the root causes of rebellion persist. Drawing upon extensive empirical research, Lineages of Revolt tracks the major shifts in the region’s political economy over recent decades. In this illuminating and original work, Adam Hanieh explores the contours of neoliberal policies, dynamics of class and state formation, imperialism and the nature of regional accumulation, the significance of...

Egypt's autocratic regime is being weakened by economic crises, growing political opposition, and the pressures of globalization. Observers now wonder which way Egypt will go when the country's aging president, Husni Mubarak, passes from the scene: will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy? Or will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Egypt after Mubarak demonstrates that both secular and Islamist opponents of the regime are navigating a middle path that may ...

The most challenging question today for the citizens of any country in the Gulf region is whether it is heading in the right direction to become a durable, sustainable system, fully supported by its people and capable of being defended from internal and external threats. In The Arab Spring and the Gulf States, Mohamed A. J. Althani, a former minister in the Qatari government, analyses the domestically important areas of demography, security, provision of food and water, and the po...

Egypt is one of the few great empires of antiquity that exists today as a nation state. Despite its extraordinary record of national endurance, the pressures to which Egypt currently is subjected and which are bound to intensify are already straining the ties that hold its political community together, while rendering ever more difficult the task of governing it.In this timely book, leading expert on Egyptian affairs Robert Springborg explains how a country with such a long and imp...

Yemen is in the grip of its most severe crisis in years. The civil war between the Huthi rebels and the Western and Arab supporters of the regime has resulted in thousands killed and three million displaced. Those who remain suffer severe food shortages and a collapsed economy. The struggle for power in the Arab world's poorest but strategically vital nation has serious implications for the region and beyond. While Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear that a Huthi takeover would threaten free passa...

A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East.The fourth edition, with new authors Melani Cammett and Ishac Diwan, has been thoroughly revised, with two new introductory chapters that provide an updated framework with which to understand and study the ma...

In November 2011, an agreement brokered by the GCC brought an end to Yemen's tumultuous uprising. The National Dialogue Conference has opened a window of opportunity for change, bringing Yemen's main political forces together with groups that were politically marginalized. Yet, the risk of collapse is serious, and if Yemen is to remain a viable state, it must address numerous political, social and economic challenges. In this invaluable volume, experts with extensive Yemen experience provi...

Nemir Kirdar has lived Iraq's history. From the country of his youth - a stable and vibrant land of great promise, to the 1958 coup that plunged Iraq into a period of terror and destruction, foreign occupation, and the fall of Saddam Hussein, he's been uniquely placed to comment on events and propose solutions.Now Kirdar shares his vision for tomorrow's Iraq, providing a blueprint for political, economic and social renewal. Calling for Iraqis to rise up and unlock their nation's po...