ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the broad context within which the region's international organizations (IOs) were created and developed. This takes the form of a brief survey of key periods in the shaping of a Middle Eastern order over the course of the twentieth century, which highlights key events and themes and provides the reader with the relevant background material against which the specific IOs were operating. The chapter explores the various tools that have been applied to the region's IOs to explain the difficulties the region has faced in creating genuinely cooperative and empowered shared institutions. Any understanding of the development of the international institutions of the Middle East must be grounded in an awareness of the nature of the Arab States system and the authoritarian structures of rule, which have predominated across the region since independence. By the end of the 1980s it was abundantly clear to most observers that Arab Nationalism had failed.
