Tobias Zumbraegel completed a PhD with a focus on politics and sustainability in Qatar, Saudi and Kuwait, which was revised / expanded and published as "Political Power and Environmental Sustainability in Gulf Monarchies" in 2022 with Palgrave. The basis of the study is existing literature and 53 interviews. Given it is a doctoral dissertation at its basis, a lot of the text is basic context of the GCC (not written for an expert audience or someone already familiar with the region). The chapters are useful in tracking change, but also quite descriptive of history, such as organizations establishment and change over time. The book does develop some interesting political-economic-power layers to sustainability in the GCC. One downside is a heavily reliance on a few key sources, but this is a useful summary for someone new to the topic and/or region. A couple of notes:

"… the high number of various actors and agencies results in a loss of efficiency that is also a major explanation for countries' poor records on environmental policymaking, which became apparent in the second part of this chapter. Typically, state-owned or semi state-owned bodies do not cooperate with each other or exchange information. This has even created 'turf wars' in some instances, as the Saudi case shows. In addition to the lack of reporting, professionalism and coordination, ill-defined competencies, overlapping responsibilities and insufficient supervision have exacerbated the problem." (p. 128)

"Ultimately, the field of environmental sustainability offers insights on the highly porous and complex boundaries between what is private, public or state owned. This allows for completely new yet often highly under-researched forms of public–private assemblages that resemble neopatrimonial networks. It makes a case for how the economic context and various actors often operate as a prolonged 'arm of the state'." (p. 168) 

From his doctoral work, Yahia Baiza wrote "Education in Afghanistan: Development, Influences and Legacies since 1901" (2013), published by Routledge. The book covers more than a century (1901-2012), structured around the political eras of the period. As much as this book is about education, it is equally about the context of each time period. This partly to help us as readers have context and probably also partly due to the scarcity of available research specific to education during the period of study. In that sense, a parts readers are left wanting more about the actual education systems. This is a niche book of which there are few comparable options, so for anyone interested in this specific area of study this is worth picking up. A few quotes:

"There has often been a misconception about the nature of modern as well as madrasa education in Afghanistan. Since the latter is understood to be an exclusively or predominantly religious-oriented form of education, it has been often described as 'Islamic school' or 'religious school', although madrasas do also teach non-religious subjects. By contrast, as modern education has been adopted from the European model of education and many of its subjects are different from the traditional madrasa education, modern education has too often been mistakenly described as 'secular' education. As shall be discussed in this book, the modern education system not only includes both religious and non-religious subjects, but religious subjects for a very long time occupied an important position. In addition, the so-called 'secular' education had to rely on teachers from the madrasa system, who would teach language, literature, religion, Arabic language and grammar, mathematical sciences, etc. Furthermore, the modern education system has been borrowing terms and concepts from the traditional madrasa system. For instance, terms such as maktab (an elementary level of education), talib (seeker) or talibul Ilm (the seeker of knowledge) for student, mudaris (teacher), talim (education) and tarbiyah (upbringing for education) etc are rooted in the so-called 'Islamic' education system. Equally, the madrasa, maktab, and makatib-e asri for a long time were used interchangeably, and meant 'modern school'." (p. 44-45)

"The curriculum, which was an important characteristic of the 'modernness' of the schools, was a combination of aspects of religious education and aspects of western education. In civil schools, the curriculum for primary level education consisted of religious education (reading and reciting the Quran), Persian, mathematics, geography, and calligraphy. The lower secondary level curriculum included religious education, history, geography, painting, health care, Persian, Afghani or Pashto, and foreign languages, specifically English, Urdu, or Turkish. The curriculum at the upper secondary level consisted of subjects such as religious education (recitation of the Quran, Tradition (hadiths), Arabic language and grammar, Persian, history, geography, algebra, geometry, analytical geometry, natural sciences, alchemy, and English." (p. 51-52)

"Education became a key catalyst as well as victim on both sides of the war. The PDPA, under the Soviet Union's advisers, integrated socialist ideology in school textbooks, and teacher education programmes. Similarly, the resistance parties, under the United States' and other Western educational experts, used schools in refugee camps and in the areas outside the state's control in Afghanistan as recruitment and propaganda centres for the Islamist parties. They developed their textbooks for disseminating anti-Soviet and anti-PDPA messages of violence, aggression, killing, and use of firearms, etc. As a result, this period experienced two key parallel education streams: the state's education system under the control of the PDPA, and the refugees' education, under the control of resistance parties." (p. 131)

"When the University of Nebraska programme staff developed these textbooks, international organizations chose to ignore the images of Islamic militancy in them for the first five years of the programme (Davis 2002: 93). Later on, when the United Nations and various NGOs lobbied against such teaching and learning materials, some images and messages that promoted violence and killing were removed from the text- books, but the religious content remained unchanged (Pourzand 2004: 24–25). However, it is also worth noting that none of the NGOs or the UN agencies criticized these textbooks as long as the Soviet Union's army was present in Afghanistan." (p. 155) 

Part of the Reading Ethiopia series

This book was written by Lovise Aalen in 2011 and it is unfortunate that I had not read this book until now, given the geography and topics covered (apologies Dr Aalen if you are out there). The author says this book explores a unique experiment in institutionalizing the politics of ethnicity: the implementation of ethnic based federalism in Ethiopia from 1991 onward" (p. vii). The data in the book comes from the mid-2000s for a doctoral study (supervised by Tronvoll). Two in-depth case studies cover Wolaita and Sidama, which have become critical cases for the topic of politics and ethnicity (the author correctly identifies the future fracture points of ethnofederalism). Still well worth a read. A few notes:

"There is no doubt that the TPLF as a guerrilla movement was inspired by the Stalinist theory of nationalities. After taking power, the front continued to believe that ethnicity was a natural and efficient principle on which to organize and mobilize the people as long as this mobilisation was led by a strong party. A clear indication that the TPLF continued to be inspired by the Soviet system and that the Soviet understanding of the 'nationality question' is that the Ethiopian Constitution of 1995 gives 'nations, nationalities, and peoples' the right to succession in Article 39. No other current constitution incorporates the right." (p. 35)

"Both the Wolayta and the Sidama initially welcomed the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, which began in 1936. The colonizers abolished the hated landlord system and did not expropriate the land, and they thus appeared as liberators from the Amhara oppressors. In Sidama, people rose up against their lords and collaborated with the Italians when they realised that the Amhara lords could not stand against the foreign invasion. When the colonizers left in 1941, the Sidama tried to organize Military to prevent the return of the Amhara rulers. This led to retaliation from the Amhara: people who had taken the Italian side were imprisoned, their cattle were confiscated, their land was seized. The Sidama today talk about this period as the second terror (hulettegna sherber) and recall that it renewed the suffering of what they call the first terror, which occurred when the Amhara came to Sidama for the first time during the reign of Menelik." (p. 75)

"The constructivist approach to ethnicity, however, underlines that we should not take for granted that ethnic groups are cohesive and that members of subgroups of the ethnic group always act in the same way. Every ethnic group is a collection of different subgroups with different opinions and alliances. Moreover, identities other than ethnic, notably by class or gender, and generation, shape the political mobilisation in a given community." (p. 127)

"I will argue, however, that in the Ethiopian context it is not actors within the ethnic groups alone who have revived the discriminatory practices. Rather, the EPRDF's promotion of ethnicity as the major organizing principle of society has combined with its pragmatic power politics in local communities to reproduce rather than challenge the traditional hierarchies." (p. 144)

"At the end of the 1990's the Sidama Development Programme, with support from Irish Aid, built a road on the Sidama side, along with a bridge, a health center and a school. This was done in order to give the Sidama population in the area, including those of the eight mender, a better supply of the services. The Sidama on the eastern side of the river started sending their children to the newly built school, but this was disrupted when the school was destroyed by parties to the conflict in 2002. These Improvements in Infrastructure on the Sidama Sid have been interpreted in ethnic terms: the Wolayta have argued that the developments were personally initiated by the regional president at that time, Abate Kisho from Sidama, as a part of campaign to disfavour the Wolayta." (p. 167)

"As the current political regime favors ethnic organisation of politics and has drawn administrative boundaries along ethnic lines, political boundaries along ethnic lines, political actors find that it pays to sharpen ethnic divides. Before ethnic-based self-rule can be implemented it has to be made clear which people belong to which group (identity discrimination) and which territories each group should be entitled to govern (territorial demarcation). This process may increase people's awareness of ethnic differences and may also create a potential for territorial disputes between groups. Groups of people that did not previously look upon themselves as ethnic entities may press such claims in order to gain their own administrative units. Thus the launch of ethnic self-administration has led to increased political mobilisation on ethnic grounds." (p. 179-180)

Tim Marshall, a political-economy and geography journalist, has penned a number of best selling books related to geography (or using geography as an entry point to discuss nation-states). His 2021 book "The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World" is the first I have read of his books. The book has ten chapters, covering 8 countries and 2 areas (the Sahel and space). It was unclear why these ten were selected (which seems a critical point to make clear for readers). The "ten maps" alluded to in the subtitles are basic cartographic regional maps with the country of focus at the center. The other part of the subtitle "the future of our world", was not well delivered on - the vast majority of the content is descriptive of history and current context, not future oriented. I have lived for extended periods in some of the countries covered, and the content is mediocre to disappointing (maybe the book is amazing on countries I do not know well, say Australia or the UK, but it does not give much reader confidence). The book is not academic, quotes and key points are not specifically cited, there are only lists of references at the end (making follow-up and fact checking impossible - readers are unable to know where the ideas are sourced). The reading lists at the end are sparse and of comparatively low quality. The source material places a heavy emphasis on websites and basic government pages, which almost certainly did not provide the material for all the content presented (for example: 1 of 11 sources for Saudi is a peer reviewed academic source, 1 of 7 listed sources for Ethiopia is a peer reviewed academic source, et cetera). I'd pass on this one. Here is an example of a future oriented comment the book has to offer:

[Australia] "This will include talking about coal. Given that all the states have coal mines, and that the AU$69.6 billion industry employs tens of thousands of people, that won't be easy... Australia could close down its industry tomorrow and not significantly reduce global pollution - it is part of a problem that will not be resolved without each country working to reduce its carbon footprint - but it would have a profound effect on the Australian economy. As such coal is likely to remain king for years to come, even as the country looks to alternative sources of energy." (p. 23)