This dissertation is an in-depth study of the underlying characteristics of the eight nation-states bordering the Persian Gulf--Behrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--and of their behavioral interactions (the 'structure of relations') between and among them over a period of approximately a dozen years spanning the decade of the 1970s The study proceeds from the hypothesis that the Persian Gulf area constitutes an incipient, and indeed already emerging 'core' of the long-conceived Middle East subsystem of the global political system--i.e., an emerging 'focus of international politics' in the Middle East. Both the concept of a core and the basic research strategy for testing its existence were derived from the writings of Louis J. Cantori and Stephen L. Spiegel and their 'empirical systems' approach to the study of the international politics of regions Through successive evaluations of the hypothesized core in terms of Cantori's and Speigel's 'pattern variables,' it is concluded that the analytical core has a concrete analog--that it 'exists' in the real world of international politics. Not only is a Persian Gulf core substantiated, but three transformations in the structure of the core are discerned during the period under study In addition to testing the hypothesis of an emerging core, this dissertation also seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the subsystemic approach to the study of regional political relationships. Several improvements to the Cantori-Spiegel framework are proposed and employed, including a number derived from the scholarly literature of political geography and geopolitics, long neglected by political scientists. It is a major objective of this dissertation to help remedy that oversight and to determine the uses and usefulness of geography-based concepts in the study of regional subsystems / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24361 |
| Date | January 1982 |
| Contributors | Dowdy, William Leroy, Iii (Author) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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