First, the Arab political regimes, on the normative prescriptive level, consider their states as parts of one nation. No Arab regime in any of the twenty-two states has dared formally to go against this proclaimed national self-identification.

Second, this belief in the importance of one Arab Nation is shared by most people in all countries, classes, and sub-groupings of the area extending from Iraq to Morocco.

Third, the increased volume of human movement and interaction across state lines in the last forty years has added a sociological dimension to both the pan-Arab political norms and institutional arrangements. In the l950s and 1960s, the bulk of interstate human movement was for study and tourism. In the 1970s and l980s, most of such movement was for work. In the 1990s the interstate movement has been for all purposes including trade and investment.