Federalism and Decentralization in the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa

Aslı Ü. Bâli co-chairs the Advisory Council for the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, chairs the Middle East Studies Association's Global Academy and serves as a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She is also co-editor of Constitution Writing, Religion and Democracy (Cambridge, 2017). Omar M. Dajani served as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel. He has continued to contribute to peacebuilding and legal infrastructure development projects for think tanks, governments, and international organizations.

1. Introduction: from revolution to devolution? Aslı Ü. Bâli and Omar M. Dajani; Part I. Theoretical and Comparative Context: 2. Decentralization to manage identity conflicts Philip G. Roeder; 3. Devolution and the promotion (or evasion) of minority rights Will Kymlicka; 4. Constitutional design options for territorial cleavages in the Middle East Tom Ginsburg; 5. How decentralization efforts have recentralized authority in the Arab world Mona Harb and Sami Atallah; Part II. Decentralization and Governance Reform: 6. Decentralization, ideology, and law in the Islamic Republic of Iran Kian Tajbakhsh; 7. Salvaging state legitimacy in Iraq through decentralization Ali Al-Mawlawi; 8. Decentralization Reforms in post-revolution Tunisia: the struggle between political and bureaucratic elites Intissar Kherigi; Part III. Decentralization and Self-Determination: 9. Autonomy beyond the state Joost Jongerden; 10. The Devil is in the details: Iraqi Kurdistan's evolving autonomy Peter Bartu and Aidan MacEachern; 11. Turkish Kurdistan: decentralization reimagined Aslı Ü. Bâli; 12. Control, responsibility, and the Israeli-Palestinian decentralization debacle Sari Bashi; 13. 'Stuck together': can a two-state confederation end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Omar M. Dajani and Dahlia Scheindlin; 14. 'Dans ses frontiers authentiques'? Morocco's advanced regionalization and the question of Western Sahara Omar Yousef Shehabi; Part IV. Decentralization, Conflict, and State Fragmentation: 15. Devolution and federalism in collapsed states: constitutional process and design George Anderson and Sujit Choudhry; 16. The promise – and limits – of stabilization through local governance in Libya Karim Mezran and Elissa Miller; 17. Decentralization in state disintegration: an examination of governance experiments in Syria Samer Araabi and Leila Hilal; 18. De-centralization in Yemen: the case of the federalist draft constitution of 2015 Benoît Challand; Part V. Conclusions: 19. Federalism and decentralization in the MENA region: types and trajectories Aslı Ü. Bâli and Omar M. Dajani.