This thesis aims to analyze the development of the collective policies of the European Union towards the Middle East by focusing on the reasons behind the formulation of these policies, and the degree of success, failure and prospects of these policies. The general success of the European Community in the 1970s created a desire for European states to form a coordinated European foreign policy. Since the 1970s, the Community started to show willingness to shape international events and to strengthen its international role. The Middle East was one of the leading regions to which the Community turned in the early 1970s, an area, which, for historical and geographical reasons, is of vital interest to it. EU has been becoming a coherent and strategic actor in the Middle East since the 1990s. It has secured an important presence in the Middle East Peace Process and it has further strengthened its role in the Middle East through the adoption of a common, comprehensive regional strategy called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and developed it with the initiation of the European Neighborhood Policy. However, the European Union&rsquo / s presence is still limited due to its institutional weaknesses, the lack of political unity among its member states, lack of political instruments and military capabilities.

ABSTRACT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY AND THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST: A STATE OF THE FIELD STUDY Tekelioglu, Ahmet Selim M.Sc., Department of International Relations Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Meliha AltuniSik January 2009, 82 pages This thesis analyzes the level of interaction between International Relations theories and the literature on the international relations of the Middle East. The disciplines- area studies controversy is analyzed in a way to account for the low level of cooperation between International Relations as an academic discipline and Middle East studies. The thesis looks into the literature in order to demonstrate to what extent developments in International Relations theories informed the study of the international relations of the Middle East. The thesis emphasizes the need for a normative/ critical aprroach in order to overcome the bridge beween these fields caused by epistemological and methodological as well as by the political economy of scholarship informed by ideological rivalries.

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This dissertation explores the application of spatial organization models to medieval Islamic urbanism. In particular, the systems of urban settlements in Mesopotamia and Persia during the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. are investigated, depending primarily on medieval indigenous sources. The study of Islamic urbanism in general, and medieval Islamic urbanism in particular, remained for a long time obscured by an inadequate single perspective: the "Islamic city" as an individual social entity occupying a fixed geographical area. The conventional approach can be criticized for its restricted focus on Islamic cultural tradition as the only explanatory variable and for its search for an ideal-type construct in the tradition of Western urban-ecological writings of the first half of the twentieth century. The alternative approach put forward in the present thesis examines the city as part of a larger urban network extending over several regions. It is argued that the application of spatial organization models to medieval Islamic urbanism will help to clarify the place and role of cities in both the regional and national structures and will provide a suitable framework for comparing the stages of urban and regional development. Following a historical perspective, the study results indicate the sequence in the evolution of a distinctive form of Islamic urbanism through the operation of several spatial processes. Such processes signify the expansion, assimilation, and integration of urban settlements in former Sasanian lands. Analysis of the road network provides the necessary framework by which interurban contacts are examined on both the national and the regional levels. Hierarchical organization of space and settlement interdependencies are further demonstrated by the analysis of long-distance kharaj (land tax) mobility. This medieval fiscal system is used as a surrogate for human spatial interaction and is supplemented by an evidence for the existence of an urban hierarchy derived from the actual methods and approaches used by the medieval Arab geographers themselves. The findings of the present study demonstrate the evidence for the evolution first of a nationally integrated urban system and second of several regionally organized urban subsystems.

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The purpose of this study is to explore how the Arabic novel can and does challenge the conventional characterization of what constitutes constructive Middle East historiography. The thesis draws on a case study of undergraduate history course syllabi in order to highlight a number of crucial issues related to Arabic literature and the production of modern Middle East history. My analysis of the syllabi concludes that in general, Arabic novels in translation are part of a varied group of resources selected by a professor in order to complement the "official" histories provided by textbooks and government documents. The novel is deemed helpful because it often describes the "ordinary" or daily life of people. Also, the novel is presented as the contribution of an "indigenous voice" to the historical narrative.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, the Bush administration articulated an anti-terrorism grand strategy of armed democratisation in the Middle East that constituted the heart of the “Bush Doctrine.” This strategy derived primarily from the framework of activist democracy promotion developed by neoconservatives, and reached its apex in 2003 when it served as the rationale for regime change in Iraq as the fulcrum for the democratic transformation of the Arab world. Yet by 2008, the Bush administration's democratisation policies and many elements of the broader neoconservative framework of democracy promotion have been significantly scaled back as a result of the challenges they have faced in the Arab world - to the extent that both are now entering a state of decline. In seeking to assess the development, assumptions and outcomes to date of the United States' post-September 11 anti-terrorism strategy in the Middle East, this thesis offers a critical account of the rise and decline of the “neoconservative moment” in American foreign policy as exemplified by the Bush Doctrine's Middle East democratisation policies. This thesis examines the origins, evolution and claims of the neoconservative paradigm of armed democracy promotion; it relates these to the justifications for interventionist democratisation in the Middle East present in the terms of the Bush Doctrine; and it assesses some of the key critiques made of these assumptions over the past five years. Unlike a number of studies of the Bush Doctrine and neoconservatism, this thesis takes seriously the Bush Doctrine's claims and neoconservative beliefs as a genuine intellectual framework for intervention, consistently examining their assertions on their own terms. Further, this thesis utilises an interdisciplinary approach of study, adopting a number of the methods and analytical tools of history and political science in making its arguments and reaching its conclusions.

This dissertation explores the diverging social spending patterns in labour-abundant regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It is motivated by two main research questions: 1. Why have social spending levels and social policy trajectories writ large diverged so drastically across labour-abundant MENA regimes? 2. How can we explain the market persistence of spending levels after divergence? To answer the first question, this study develops a theory about the emergence of authoritarian welfare states. It argues that autocratic leaders need both the incentives and the abilities to distribute welfare for authoritarian welfare states to emerge. The former are shaped by coalition building dynamics at the onset of regime formation while the latter are conditioned by the external environment. At the level of incentives, broad coalitions emerge in the presence of intra-elite conflict and the absence of salient communal cleavages and, if present jointly, provide a strong incentive for welfare provision. Conversely, a cohesive elite or salient communal division entail small coalitions with few incentives to distribute welfare broadly. At the level of abilities, a strong external threat to regime survival is expected to undermine the ability to provide social welfare in broad coalitions. Facing a 'butter or guns' trade-off, elites shift priority to security expenditures and the population accepts that because no alternative regime could credibly commit to neglecting external defence in the presence of external threats. Only an abundant resource endowment can provide the necessary resources to avert this trade-off. To answer the second question, I rely on two important mechanisms in the welfare state literature to explain path dependance. The first one can broadly be summarised as 'constituency politics' in that beneficiaries of social policies succesfully avert deviations from the spending path in the form of systemic reforms or large-scale spending cuts. Mobilisation of these constituencies should be particularly vigourous if initial advantages conferred to these groups habe been reinforced over time, for instance, because these groups grew in size or got entrenched in the state administration. The second mechanisms are spill-over effects to unintended beneficiaries who can over time become important gatekeepers against path divergence. Methodologically, the study is characterised by a mixed-methods approach which combines quantitative tests with the analysis of qualitative evidence in the form of arhcival material, newspapers, and field interviews. Moreover, the study also follows a multi-level approach in that the viability of the argument is tested comparatively at the cross-country level and process-traced at the micro-level in two in-depth case studies of Tunisia and Egypt.

From Ancient Near Eastern texts, the Bible and archaeological artefacts, we are able to glimpse an over arching belief in a feminine deity. During the occupation of the Temple Mount by the Knights Templars, earlier traditions were ”re-discovered” and accepted as a de facto tradition. William St Clair at the threshold of the Renaissance, mindful of the danger of heresy, was intellectually able to bring together many traditions into a broad Biblically-based theology that recognised the early Israelite traditions as the foundation of Christian belief. All this is evident in Rosslyn Chapel. / OLD TESTAMENT & ANCIENT NE / MA (BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY)