Ending Sykes-Picot : the Arab World and the West after 2011.

Amidst ongoing instability in the post-2011 Arab political, economic and social environment, accelerated in many cases by the weakening of the authority of the state – and in some cases by the removal or terminal decline of regimes – fundamental issues about what it means to be Arab and modern in the post-colonial Arab order are in dispute. The driving forces of change – demographic pressures, education, connectivity, unemployment and other frustrations and indignities – continue to fracture most Middle East Arab societies in complex ways, while the core political, judicial and economic institutions created by modernising rulers since the 19th century (in the case of Egypt) and in the colonial and early post-colonial era mostly remain in place. In Egypt and some other non-oil exporting Arab countries an amorphous desire to widen space for political and cultural expression was met by hard-edged determination to secure the success of an ill-defined and largely unarticulated Islamist vision. While initially it enjoyed political ascendancy 1 the Islamist trend has subsequently encountered major challenges to its authority and political legitimac