This article explores the relationship between institutions, roles, and role conflict, and examines the destabilizing effects of the coexistence of overlapping international institutions in the context of the Arab Middle East. I am concerned with two features of the relationship between institutions and roles. First, while roles figure prominently in many definitions of institutions, they are given scant theoretical or empirical attention in the institutions literature. The second concern is what transpires when the state is embedded in more than one institution and each institution demands a different role and set of behavioral actions. Therefore, the state's actions that are consistent with the role requirements of one institution might be inconsistent with the role demands of another institution. States frequently experience role conflict as a consequence of their presence in two or more institutions, and such coexisting institutions, far from producing the stabilizing qualities observed by many theorists, can generate false expectations and conflict. We need a better understanding of the effects of overlapping institutions on state behavior. The Arab states system is used as an illustrative case study to demonstrate how role conflict complicated the search for regional stability. Arab states had two distinct roles because of the institutions of sovereignty and pan-Arabism: they were at one and the same time to recognize each other's authority and to follow pan-Arabism to its logical conclusion of political unification. These institutions provided different and potentially contradictory roles for Arab states, which complicated the search for regional order.
