Rethinking Middle East Politics

"Bromley has written an incisive, balanced, and insightful treatment of some of the most important and influential paradigms in Middle Eastern studies. Looking at each of the analytical frameworks critically, he offers his own interpretation of some of the more important forces at work in the process of state formation in the Middle East. . . . A provocative examination of a much debated aspect of Middle Eastern politics. It should be carefully read by anyone who is interested in examining the historical forces behind state formation in the Middle East" --CIRA (Center for Iranian Research and Analysis) Bulletin Rethinking Middle East Politics considers a range of debates on the character of political and socioeconomic development in the Middle East, focusing on the linked processes of state formation and capitalist development. Simon Bromley seeks to reformulate the central questions involved in the study of state formation. He builds a comparative framework based on an examination of key developmental processes in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and offers a range of substantive theses on the place of democracy and Islam in the region. His findings explain a very large part of what appears to be significant in the emergence of the modern Middle East. Rethinking Middle East Politics presents a new way of analyzing politics in the Middle East, offering a perspective that has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally and for the social and political theory of modernity.