Does Any One Ir Theory Best Explain the Middle East?

Introduction

The past few decades witnessed a world full of changes, which drive the complexity of world politics into being even more complicated and dynamic. However, hardly any region could be found as a better testimony on it than the Middle East. Sixteen wars, eight major revolutions and countless regional uprisings happened in a mere period of 5 decades. Arguably, the Middle East has established itself as the “epicentre of world crisis”.1 The complication and importance of the region understandably invites many explanations from many schools of the International Relations discipline. As a dominating thought in the International Relations, realists see the Middle East region as a best-suited source where the most convincing empirical evidences of power politics are generated. The power imbalance and regional hostilities lead to the classical case of security dilemma, escalating tensions into conflicts. For those think the processes of foreign policy making are decisive, internal power struggles, bureaucracy and leader styles are crucial. This school of thoughts combined with the structuralist view from the neorealists gives birth to the so-called “neotraditional realism”, a seemingly contradictory name, referring to the belief that state-level and systemic elements should not be weighted over each other. 2 Another two influential schools of thoughts are the constructivism and pluralism. The formal approach emphasises the ideological and conceptual determinants while the later asserts the configuration of domestic regimes matters. Each of those theories,

1 Hinnebusch, R., (2003), The International Politics of the Middle East, Manchester University Press, p.1. 2 Nonneman, G., (2005), “Anayzing the Foreign Policies of the Middle East and North Africa: A Conceptual Framework”, in Nonneman, G., (2005), Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and The Relationship with Europe, Routledge, p.7.

excellent as they all are, often give insufficient explanations on...