The Crisis of Political Authority: A Study of Arab Political Thought

The Center for Arab Unity Studies has published the book “The Crisis of Political Authority: A Study of Arab Political Thought”, by Dr. Imad Mesbah Mukhaimar

In spite of the major events and transformations that the Arab world is witnessing in the last ten years, which opened the door to a change in the systems of government in some Arab countries, these events were not sufficient to establish a new type of governance in which the authority is based in accordance with the standards of the modern state, where the people is the source of the authorities, and the ruler is nothing but an agent of the people in managing the affairs of their state according to a clear constitutional basis for rights and duties, and for the separation of powers. This justifies the need for more in-depth research into the crisis of political power in the Arab world and the intellectual reference that establishes this crisis, which this book seeks to research.

This book provides an analytical, critical and decoding review of the concept of political power, its sources of legitimacy, and its philosophical reference in Arab political thought. It is a reference that is still based on the irrational reconciliation between the religious-cultural heritage on the one hand and Western modernist thought on the other hand, which results in ambiguous thinking that establishes a crisis reality. In the Arab political authority that is unable to keep pace with the historical development of society and its requirements on the one hand, and seeks to reproduce tyranny and deepen the rift between it and its people on the other hand; The book also analyzes the problematic relationship between the authority of this political authority in Arab political thought and the political practices of power on the ground in Arab countries.