Crises in the Middle East routinely generate diagnoses of a “new Middle East” in the making or reproduce narratives of an unconsolidated region perpetually trapped in instability and fragmentation. Although different in their premises, both interpretations often justify foreign penetration—by democratic and authoritarian actors alike—as indispensable to preserving, managing, or transforming regional order.
By theoretically interpreting order as a stable and coordinated set of norms, limits, and expectations derived from underlying shared—at least by the system-hegemon(s)—principles, this panel examines how the concept of “order” is being evaluated, contested, or reconfigured in the post-2023 regional setting. It seeks to bring together reflections from diverse theoretical, methodological, and geographical perspectives that critically engage with the following questions:
- Can we even speak of a Middle Eastern regional order, or is it a reflection of the wider international one? Is the existing order stabilising, evolving, fragmenting, or collapsing?
- Can personalistic diplomacy, transactionalism, ideological alignments, minilateralism, and apparently normless practices be understood as converging around the shared principles of a "new" regional order? Do they indicate the coexistence of rival orders or the absence of order itself?
- Which alternative discourses of order are advanced by regional powers, external states, international organisations, and non-state actors? What political, moral, or legal principles underpin these visions, and whose participation and claims are recognised as legitimate or excluded?
The panel invites papers investigating how actors narrate regional order, identify legitimate participants, threats, and victims, and authorise forms of cooperation, intervention, normalisation, or coercion. It particularly encourages contributions that move beyond a rigid liberal–illiberal divide.
Contributions may examine official statements, diplomatic initiatives, peace plans, policy documents, institutional practices, and media narratives. Comparative, interpretive, critical, and historically informed approaches are welcome. Papers on Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf monarchies and Iran, are encouraged, as well as extra-regional actors’ understanding of their interests and corresponding role, including the US, Europe, Russia, China, Turkey, Pakistan, and India.
By bringing these perspectives together, the panel conceptualises order as an arena in which normative boundaries are continually drawn and contested, thus broadly contributing to debates about changing modes of global governance.
