Arab Nationalist Constitutions of 1958 in the Context of the Cold War: the cases of the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic, the Iraqi-Jordanian Arab Union, and the Republic of Iraq

Abstract

Unlike many works on constitutions, this article focuses on non-legal aspects of the framing of Arab constitutions. This emphasis on the social and political in lieu of purely legal aspects of constitution-making allows us to place constitutions in a wider regional and not merely national context, and interpret them from a not strictly legal perspective. By adopting such an approach, historians can explain the extent to which the turbulence in the Arab world in the 1950s as a result of Arab nationalism, the creation of the state of Israel, the rivalry between revolutionary and monarchic Arab regimes, and the Cold War affected three Arab organic laws in the revolutionary year of 1958. This focus on contemporary social and political developments enables scholars to explain why the three different fundamental laws examined here reflect three different interpretations of Arab nationalism.