Research Papers

The League of the Arab States was founded in 1945 with the ambition to coordinate its member states' actions in a number of issue areas ranging from culture to security. However, as a consequence of innumerate internal discrepancies the Arab League has largely lived out a modest existence of growing political irrelevance to its member states. At the 2010 Summit held in Sirt in Libya the League appeared to effectively find itself at the organizational death's door. The contrast to events involving the League in 2011 could therefore not have been greater. External expectation quot; from Europe and elsewhere -- and domestic demands as a consequence of the Arab Spring have combined to propel the otherwise stagnant organization into unprecedented activism membership suspensions, threatening sanctions, ideating peace plans, sending observers) and even into a global and regional protagonist role (e.g. lending crucial support for UN Resolution 1973). The League's efforts of course have not been without certain hiccups or critique. Nevertheless, what few observers have failed to miss is the spectacular change between the dormant, inefficient League pre-2011 and the currently much more active League as well as the ambitious bridging function it appears to aim for between regional dynamics and global institutions. This paper will therefore examine what explains the League's institutional awakening and what/who drives the organization's current agenda. The paper will also ponder how to situate the League's newfound attempts to contribute to global and regional governance in a larger international setting to cast the current activism into relief. We will in particular explore whether synergies can be found between Arab League initiatives, if these are sustained over time, and the European Union's bilateral and multilateral diplomatic overtures for the Mediterranean area or whether the EU will have to retreat as the Arab League's diplomacy advances.