656 PS • July 2017 © American Political Science Association, 2017 doi:10.1017/S1049096517000336 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ R obert W. Cox famously observed that “theory is always for someone and for some purpose. There is…no such thing as theory in itself divorced from a standpoint in time and space” (1986, 207). International relations (IR) scholarship on the Middle East is no exception. IR and security studies scholar- ship since the US invasion of Iraq and throughout the Arab uprisings generally has been framed around questions that relate to the security interests and policies of the US and its allies. This has left Western IR scholarship detached from the challenges, threats, and interests of the people in the region. For IR theory to be relevant to the peoples of the Middle East, Bilgin (2015, 10) highlights the need “to understand insecuri- ties experienced by various states and non-state actors in the Arab world.” What insights into understanding and theoriz- ing the politics of security in the Arab region can be gained from a vantage point located inside the region, such as the once war-torn city of Beirut? Taking seriously the experience of such so-called weak and insecure states points to an approach toward understanding the geopolitics of the Arab world that recognizes the heteroge- neous nature of the security environment composed of diverse state, non-state, and transnational actors that serve as agents of both security and insecurity. The security calculations of these actors also must be understood as embedded in transnational security relationships. Lebanon, for example, often is viewed as the quintessential weak state, with this weakness defined as a source of political instability and regional insecurity. A closer look at Lebanon’s “weak” but plural system of governance over security, however, suggests that it has been relatively effective and surprisingly resilient in containing both domestic and external security threats. Lebanon should not be dismissed as an exceptional case. Instead, it offers a largely ignored context from which to develop new theoretical perspectives about how to promote security for peoples and states in the region. MAPPING THE POLITICS OF INSECURITY IN THE ARAB WORLD: BEYOND THE STATE The Lebanese scholar Bassel Salloukh (2015, 47) referred to a so-called Montréal school of Arab politics that emphasizes “the overlap between domestic, transnational and geopolit- ical factors in the making of Middle East international rela- tions.” Salloukh and his colleagues identify the permeability of Arab states and national political systems to transnational ideological currents as well as non-state actors that challenge regime legitimacy and security. This approach suggests a path for IR theorizing based on recognizing the agency of domestic and non-state actors in the context of a region of states weak- ened by war and external intervention (Salloukh 2015, 50). In doing so, one must avoid the parochialisms noted by Pinar Bilgin (2015) in which particular questions of security are defined in terms of the idealized Weberian “nation-state.” At the same time, one should not represent the Middle East as an exceptional region that requires its own particular theo- rizations. A “Beirut School” of IR would also need to develop a transnational approach that recognizes how internal state and security structures have been produced by and embedded in global structures. Across the Arab world, societal actors often understand the sources of insecurity they face in ways that differ from those of Arab state elites and political regimes. This is due in large part to the way that the region became integrated into global political and economic structures (Niva 1999). This disjunc- ture is a long-standing product of patterns of state-building in which regimes gain security directly from external powers and/or gain needed arms and resources from rentier sources (e.g., oil receipts and foreign aid). This process short-circuits European-style state-building as understood by Charles Tilly (1990), in which rulers provide security for their societies in exchange for the ability to extract the needed resources and labor to promote it. In contrast, state elites across the Arab world often define their interests in relation to external patrons rather than to their own societies, whereas societal groups often view external forces, rival societal groups, or even the state as primary security threats. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, for example, conflicts between regime and societal understandings of insecurity were defined by the rise of radical-populist Arab nationalism, which sought to challenge the role of Western powers in Arab regional politics (Ajami 1978; Kerr 1971). The mobilization of Arab nationalist forces compelled some states to follow Arabist policies even when they challenged the regime’s own interests, often tied to their external patrons. By the 1970s, the consol- idation of state power and the suppression of dissenting social forces resulted in foreign policies more reflective of regime pref- erences, often tied to the security interests of external powers. However, new disjunctures between societal groups and regimes about the understanding of insecurity arose by the 1990s. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the rise of Iranian regional influence further fragmented political order in Arab states. These disjunctures drove the Arab uprisings and their subse- quent slide into civil war (Hazbun 2015). Seeking to account for them and explain their implications is a central task for schol- ars of security politics in the Arab world. An exploration of POLITICS SYMPOSIUM The Politics of Insecurity in the Arab World: A View from Beirut Waleed Hazbun, American University of Beirut ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core . Access paid by the UC Berkeley Library, on 16 Jun 2017 at 16:45:49, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms . https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000336