The ongoing political turmoil in the Middle East as a whole would seem to be essentially a contest between the minimalist and maximalist positions on popular sovereignty: should power merely come from, and be exercised in the name of, the people? Or, should those in power be fully accountable to the people? The dilemma warrants a closer look. The present volume comes out of an international conference held in Calcutta, India organised by the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies and the Centre for Pakistan and West Asian Studies, University of Calcutta in March 2013. This volume aims not at a...

The Arab Spring, widely perceived as a momentous event in West Asia, has evoked a persistent flow of interpretation and analysis by academic experts and policy-makers since the upheaval first broke out in December 2010 and the pace of events suggests the flow of analysis on this issue will continue. Like all great social upheavals, the Arab Spring was long-drawn-out in its realisation and born of many factors that are intertwined. It could have occurred any time during the course of the last two or three decades but each passing year brought to the forefront new developments that made it that...