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Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- 1. War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East -- 2. Guns, Gold, and Grain: War and Food Supply in the Making of Transjordan -- 3. The Climax and Crisis of the Colonial Welfare State in Syria and Lebanon during World War II -- 4. War, Keynesianism, and Colonialism: Explaining State-Market Relations in the Postwar Middle East Robert Vitalis and Steven Heydemann -- 5. Si Vis Stabilitatem, Para Bellum: State Building, National Security, and War Preparation in Syria -- 6. Changing Boundaries and Social Crisis Israel and the 1967 War -- 7. War as Leveler, War as Midwife Palestinian Political Institutions, Nationalism, and Society since 1948 -- 8. War in the Social Memory of Egyptian Peasants -- 9. War as a Vehicle for the Rise and Demise of a State-Controlled Society: The Case of Ba'thist Iraq -- 10. The Political Economy of Civil War in Lebanon -- 11. The Cumulative Impact of Middle Eastern Wars -- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY -- List of Contributors -- INDEX

For almost forty years Syria has been ruled by a populist authoritarian regime under the Ba'th Party, led since 1970 by President Hafiz al-Asad. The durability and resilience of this regime is a striking contrast to the instability and intense social.

AbstractThe Syrian conflict presents as a case that has been well‐studied in the power‐sharing literature. It is typically coded as an ethno‐sectarian civil war moving towards a decisive military victory by an authoritarian regime and thus unlikely to end in a power‐sharing agreement. Yet Syria's experience offers important insights into the effects of new conflict environments on prospects for power‐sharing in 'hard' cases. Syria's conflict exhibits attributes and is unfolding in an environment that requires rethinking simplistic correlations between the military and political outcomes of civil wars. Moreover, the form of political settlement that emerges in Syria may also complicate assumptions about the ability of victors to shape the terms of post‐war settlements unilaterally. Whether a power‐sharing agreement is reached in Syria – however remote the prospects for that might be – will be determined by factors that underscore the impact changing conflict contexts can have on how civil wars end.

Drawing on the research presented by contributors to this special issue, this article assesses the analytic opportunities that emerge when the Arab uprisings are conceptualized as moments of transformation rather than as incipient, awed or failed transitions to democracy. Highlighting critical issues that cut across and link the experiences of political relevant elites (PREs) and mobilized publics in the cases of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, it identifies three sets of issues that warrant further comparative research: the effects of stateness and patterns of state-society relations on the trajectory of Arab uprisings; the role of identity politics and non-state forms of solidarity as drivers of political mobilization and collective action, and the impact of these forms of collective action on possibilities for establishing stable, legitimate forms of governance; and the limits of civil societies and civic sectors in influencing transformational processes.