The Dynamics of Change in the Arab World

In the second half of 2005, IAI in collaboration with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (SIIA-UI)  launched a multi-annual research project aimed at developing and updating the analytical paradigms that international political studies have been using to study political change in the Arab countries since 1990 until today. This revision was made necessary by the conceptual impasse reached by those interpretations based on the democratisation paradigm and Islamic exceptionalism. The final aim of the project was to improve the knowledge and conceptualisation of power relations in the main Arab countries.

 The project came to an end in the first half of 2008 with the international conference: Stockholm, September 8, 2008: "The dynamics of change in the Arab world: Globalisation and the re-structuring of state power", in cooperation with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (SIIA)-UI.

This conference was preceded by a seminar convened under the same title in February 2007 in Rome.

The results of the research have been collected and published in the book:
Laura Guazzone and Daniela Pioppi (eds), The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization. The Restructuring of State Power in the Middle East, Reading, Ithaca Press, March 2009, ISBN 978-0-86372-339-1 and October 2012, ISBN 978-0-86372-389-6 (pbk)
Other ed.: Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, September 2009, ISBN 978-977-416-336-4 (pbk)