ABSTRACT
From the early 1920s, when the institutional foundations of separate Arab nation-states in the Middle East were being laid, until the present day, the Arab world has existed in a tension between the conflicting pulls of Pan-Arabism and particularism. Several factors have determined the actual course of events that has unfolded between these two poles—between the creation of a single united Arab state, on the one hand, and the existence and consolidation of a number of distinct Arab nation-states, on the other. I shall concern myself here with the effect of two specific developments—one of them demographic and the other economic—upon the tension between Arab unity and particularism. The two developments I shall be considering are, first, the high rate of natural increase of the populations of Egypt and of Iran; and, second, the influence exerted by the substantial revenues received from the export of crude oil in the period 1974–81. The interrelation between these developments, and their impact on the situation of the separate Arab nation-state, will also be examined.
