What was your motivation behind writing this book?

The question of the state remains relatively under-researched as regards the Middle East and North Africa. It is a bit of a paradox given the massive literature on the region. The aim was therefore to go beyond the familiar discussions on the major conflicts or the trajectories of given countries to paint a meta-picture of that recent and consequential history. Specifically, the book investigates and analyses the modern genealogy of statehood in the region. It makes the argument that the past one hundred years can indeed be characterised as a century during which the societies of the Middle East and the North African region have been overwhelmingly preoccupied with the project of the establishment of viable and functioning states. That project was crucial for them and for the larger international environment and, in significant ways, it remains a difficult and incomplete task.

How did you decide on the categorisation of the different chapters?

To capture and represent the fullness of the question as much as possible within the century-long frame from the mid-1910s to the late 2010s, the structure combines a thematic and a chronological approach. The volume is divided in three main parts on, respectively, the foundations of the problem, the resulting irresolutions and the current reinventions and returns. The first part is concerned with the colonial legacy and the lasting imprint of Ottoman control (on most but not all states). The second illustrates the problematic legacy of this history through three cases, namely those of Palestine, Iraq and the Kurdish question. The last part delves into the more recent trends influencing the history of that state-in-the-making, highlighting in particular the rise of neo-authoritarianism, the revolutionary role of transnational armed militancy and the persistence of international interventionism. These chapters are bookended by introductory and concluding chapters examining the statehood conundrum itself and its wider meaning in this region and ultimately conceptually. 

Could you tell us about the main contributions of the book to the literature on state-building?

First, the book investigates the complexity and the peculiarity of the state-building project in the Middle East and North Africa. In contradistinction to linear state-formation accounts, it considers that project as moulded in a given timeframe – a century ago – with various local and external forces determining haphazardly a continuing contest for power, which is primarily political, and assesses that project as ongoing. Secondly, away from stigmatising and Eurocentric gazing onto these states as “failed” or “fragile”, the book documents the history of statehood in the region as a rich and layered process wherein that very elusiveness assessed negatively is in fact a fertile terrain of reflection on what statehood is and can be. Thirdly, the book shows that ultimately the elusive Oriental search for state-building started at the confluence of three related but distinct developments: the end of the Ottoman Empire, the inception of the colonial encounter and the rise of nationalistic and religious competing emancipation movements.

How did you experience the collaboration with various scholars when preparing the book?

It was a wonderful experience to reconnect with scholars whom I had not seen in a long while and who had influenced my own early work on state-building. In that respect, it was a genuine privilege to bring together the likes of Ghassan Salamé, Henry Laurens, Bertrand Badie, François Burgat and Lisa Anderson, as well younger researchers such as Ahmad Khalidi, Benoît Challand, Jordi Tejel and Bruce Rutherford. The book features the last chapter written by one of the towering figures in the field, the late Iraqi sociologist Faleh Abdel Jabar who unfortunately passed away during the completion of the volume. The book is dedicated to him.

Lastly, how do you see the future of the states in the region?

A work in progress that must be understood as such and not judged hastily and a-historically. The past century was the scene of a crucial competition between societal projects throughout the region pursuing visions of nation and state anchored, differently, in nationalism or religion. Even if they tried by the mid-twentieth century to maximise their positions (individually as new states or jointly in regional organisations), the countries of the region were essentially, in majority, political systems set up by others to the latter’s benefits. Dominated by a sense of peripherality, such exogenous encounters with modernity largely hold the keys to the “volatility”, “instability” and “violence” that became the familiar depictions of the region (and hallmarks of Orientalism) but they also constituted the stage for the nationalist/military and the Islamist/insurgency forces that are still competing indecisively in most of these theatres.

Full citation of the book:
Mohamedou, Mohammad-Mahmoud, ed. State-Building in the Middle East and North Africa: One Hundred Years of Nationalism, Religion and Politics. London: I.B. Tauris, 2021.
Interview by Bugra Güngör, PhD candidate in International Relations and Political Science; editing by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.

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