ABSTRACT
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the most insecure of regions, the location of some of the globe’s most protracted conflicts and with some of the least effective regional security arrangements. This is puzzling since the Arab core of the region has a higher sense of collective identity than most other regions and it hosts one of the world’s oldest regional organizations, the League of Arab States, also known as the Arab League. What explains MENA’s security and regionalism deficits and how do states respond to it? To explain this, the chapter firstly outlines the security context, analysing the features of the region that make threats so salient; it then looks at regional states’ security conceptions (the main perceived threats) and the features of the main regional organization, the Arab League (which is supposed to mitigate them); finally, it surveys the evolution of actual regional security practices over time. It concludes that while regional norms, organization and security management have increasingly given way to global penetration of the region, the latter lacks the legitimacy to establish a stable security order. Map of membership of the Arab League. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203422496/84b35142-f16a-4630-bee6-7fa0ac57f848/content/map7_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
