Is Yemen a failed state? The Yemen Republic is the result of the unification in 1990 of two former states: The Yemen Arab Republic (NorthYemen) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). The country's history and its former units have been marred with civil wars, poverty and epidemic corruption.

This course suggests a framework of analysis for the divergent outcomes of the Arab Uprisings (2011) using Yemeni Civil War as an example. It argues that the interaction between different types of state formation and regional context can explain the disintegration of some countries such as Yemen and Libya and the preservation of states such as Egypt and Tunisia.