Rethinking Middle East Politics

This new text offers an introduction to the complex area of Middle East politics, Bromley formulates a new way of analysing politics in the Middle East and develops a perspective which has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally. Preface.

Introduction.

1. Understanding the Middle East.

2. From Tributary Empires to States-System.

3. Rethinking Middle East Politics.

4. Comparative State Formation in the Middle East.

5. Patterns of Social Development in the Middle East.

Conclusions.

Appendix.

Bibliography.

Index.

'A thought-provoking, theoretically informed book which challenges the way we look at the politics of the modern Middle East.' Times Literary Supplement

'Highly recommended to all students and scholars of the Middle East.' Social and Behavioral Sciences

'A radical, cogent revision of the whole framework in which this region is normally studied.' International Affairs

'This is a most stimulating and provocative book, one which will undoubtedly loom large on booklists in Middle Eastern politics for many years to come. It is also a pleasure to read.' Political Quarterly

'The book he has produced offers a provocative examination of a much-debated aspect of the 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 Bulletin

"Rethinking Middle East Politics ... provides a compelling and often provocative description of the Janus-faced nature of Middle East state formation and political development.... An important piece of scholarship that deserves the attention of students of Middle Eastern politics and development." The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

"Rethinking Middle East Politics raises important questions with regards to the distinctiveness of the Middle East, and, as such makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature." Political Studies

Simon Bromley is Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Leeds. He is also co-author of Thatcherism (Polity, 1988) and author of American Hegemony and World Oil (Polity, 1990). This book considers a range of debates on the character of political and socio-economic change in the Middle East, focusing on the linked processes of state formation and capitalist development.

The author seeks to reformulate the central questions involved in the study of state formation: he develops a comparative framework based on an examination of key developmental processes in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and he offers a range of substantive theses on the place of democracy and Islam in the region. Moreover, he argues that, by focusing on the historical character of surplus appropriation, by detailing the specific social relations which have governed these processes, and by considering their patterns of reproduction and transformation, we can explain a very large part of what appears to be significant about the transformation of the modern Middle East. In particular, we can better and more fully explain the key features of the region than can those accounts that have stressed its cultural or institutional peculiarities.

Rethinking Middle East Politics is concerned to formulate a new way of analysing politics in the Middle East, developing a perspective which has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally and for the social and political theory of modernity.