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Filippo Dionigi, Hezbollah: mobilisation and power, International Affairs, Volume 96, Issue 2, March 2020, Pages 547–548, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa030
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In the past few years, Hezbollah has been attracting much scholarly attention from researchers working on the Middle East and beyond. Some recent book-length publications include Joseph Daher's Hezbollah: the political economy of Lebanon's Party of God (London: Pluto Press, 2016), Mohanad Hage-Ali's Nationalism, transnationalism and political Islam: Hizbullah's institutional identity (London: Palgrave, 2017); and Adham Saouli's Hezbollah: socialisation and its tragic ironies (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
Aurélie Daher's book was published originally in 2014, and its 2019 English translation is a welcome contribution to the academic debate on the origins, development, influence and identity of an actor that is confirming itself as a key player in domestic and regional dynamics.
Daher is a scholar of Lebanese origins based in French academia, who spent part of her life in those areas of Lebanon where Hezbollah has played an important role. Her book offers a comprehensive historical and sociological analysis that stands out for its wealth of empirical detail and for its capacity to question stereotypical views on the group. The first section of the book begins with the formation of the movement in the early 1980s and ends with the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, while the second part covers the years from 2000 to 2015.