Analysing Middle East Foreign Policies: The Relationship With Europe

摘要

Disjuncture between theory and practice is anything but novel. Yet, recent American interventions in and increased attention towards the Middle East have exposed an acute gap between international relations (IR) (as practice) and IR (as discipline). In an attempt to better integrate the Middle East region into the study of IR, this edited text attempts to turn traditional scholarship on its head: instead of concentrating on the foreign policy of Western states towards the Middle East, it focuses on Middle Eastern state's foreign policies vis-a-vis Europe in particular, and the West in general. In support of this, Gerd Nonneman presents a research agenda that proposes a foreign policy analysis approach tethered to three interrelated environments — domestic, regional and international — that highlights the dynamics and tensions of foreign policy making in Middle Eastern states. The chapters presented in the volume utilize this approach to present and analyse foreign policy through individual case studies.