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Arab States Must Forge a New Social Contract

Nassif Hitti anticipates a "disordered order" in the region in 2013 and calls for a new social contract in Arab states.  
A Syrian child refugee cries as he stands at a queue waiting to receive aid from Turkish humanitarian agencies at Bab al-Salam refugee camp in Syria near the Turkish border December 22, 2012. International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will visit Syria in the next few days and is expected to meet President Bashar al-Assad, government officials and some opposition factions, a source in the Arab League said. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah (SYRIA - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS)

The regional order that is emerging in the Middle East is still going through shock waves of tensions, crises and changes of different magnitude that are the byproduct of the revolutions spreading from Tunisia to Syria, better labeled as the "conflict of all conflicts" in the region. We are witnessing the proliferation of failed and failing states in the Middle East, unable to establish a new social contract for some between the new emerging regimes and society, a necessary basis for good governance and legitimate stability.

Such a case can be attributed to Egypt and Tunisia as current and adequate examples of this challenge. Other states are facing yet another challenge, the one of the revival of sub- and transnational identities and the difficulty to forge an all-encompassing, inclusive national identity. This latter is clearly seen in Iraq and in Yemen and is expected to be the case for Syria later on. Another key challenge is the economy of countries undergoing transitions, which are facing the vicious cycle of rising expectations and promises of change, while economic indicators are low and these new regimes are still unable to provide a vision and to devise policies to successfully address the economic and social problems that were at the basis of the popular uprising and calls for change.

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