**Preface to "The Fragility-Grievances-Conflict Triangle in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)"**

This book is based on a Special Issue on the same topic, published by Social Sciences journal in 2021-2022. It looks at the conceptual, theoretical and causal/constitutive interaction between state fragility and conflict as well as between state fragility and lack of human development. It focuses on the MENA region, paying particular attention to the role of social policies and the political contexts that underpin them.

The book consists of four sections:

1. Introduction,

2. Section dealing with factionalism and political discontent, consisting of chapters on:

a. Fragmentation and Grievances as Fuel for Violent Extremism: The Case of Abu Musa'ab Al-Zarqawi

b. Determinants of the Arab Spring Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya: What Have We Learned?

c. The (Semi) State's Fragility: Hamas, Clannism, and Legitimacy, and

d. Political Fragility and the Timing of Conflict Mediation

3. Section on Social Protection, State Fragility and Conflict, consisting of chapters on:

a. Service Delivery, State Legitimacy and Conflict in Arab Countries: Exploring the Key Linkages Using a Social Policy Perspective

b. Social Security Enrolment as an Indicator of State Fragility and Legitimacy: A Field Experiment in Maghreb Countries

c. State Fragility, Social Contracts and the Role of Social Protection: Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, and

d. Subsidy Reform and the Transformation of Social Contracts: The Cases of Egypt, Iran and Morocco, and finally

4. Conclusions.

The book looks at the interaction between different aspects of state fragility and political conflict and developmental grievances. Instead of only looking at formal political and economic institutions, the book also focuses on informal sectors both in politics and the economy.

The introductory article of the book shows that state fragility in the MENA region predicts developmental grievances and violence, as it does in the rest of the world. However, the MENA region is unique, as its problems have become more internationalised and the region is intervened in militarily by outsiders more than other regions. Conflict and developmental grievances in the MENA region are much more related to problems of political legitimacy than in the rest of the world. The impact of economic reliance on commodity and raw material trade is also much more complicated in the MENA region than in the rest of the world. The following chapters complicate this picture further by engaging more sophisticated data and realities that are often left behind by the data. The book consists of articles focused on different aspects of these generic and MENA-specific factors in the fragility–grievance–conflict triangle.

This book aims at sparking a theoretical and empirical debate that focuses on the complex relationship between, on one hand, states' institutional capacity and resources (including the felt social, economic and political injustices and lack of public services in the MENA) and, on the other, grievances and conflict. The aim is to offer analyses that set a foundation to further debate and research that focuses on policies to remedy the social and political problems of the MENA region related to the triangle of fragility, grievance and conflict.

> **Timo Kivimaki and Rana Jawad** *Editors*
