Order and Change in the Middle East: A Neo-Gramscian Twist on the International Society Approach

Abstract

The Middle East states system has persisted for close to a century, with borders of states little changed from its founding; yet the region is conflict-ridden, even ‘Hobbesian’, with repeated efforts to forge security regimes having foundered. A fractured sort of regional international society — with understood practices such as sovereignty, diplomacy and power-balancing — exists, but it is riddled with norm dissensus, its very legitimacy contested, with periodic wars, revolutions and interventions seeking to remake or defend this order. Its development is arguably best understood by combining the ‘international society’ and neo-Gramscian approaches.