Rethinking Middle East Politics

Abstract

The process by which the modem Middle East has taken its presentpolitical shape and continues to develop is the subject of a large and diverserealm of scholarship. Authors have examined this topic from a variety ofacademic and political points of view, but few have been able to classifythe assortment of past works in a coherent way while formulating a validnew approach to this complex area of study. Simon Bromley's most recentbook, Rethinking Middle East Politics, is an ambitious work that is moresuccessful than most earlier endeavors at meeting this dual challenge.Borrowing heavily from Marxism, Bromley pieces together a "historical-materialist" approach that, he posits, illuminates the processes of tateformation and political development in the Middle East while highlightingboth the distinctive aspects of the region's development and its similaritiesto other nondeveloped areas. The book is not flawless; Bromley makesseveral claims that may not be as universaJly accepted as he suggests andsupports the modem Middle East case studies with only a limited numberof references. Despite these relatively mild shortcomings, RethinkingMiddle East Politics as a whole provides a compelling and often provocativedescription of the Janus-faced nature of Middle East state formationand political development.Bromley begins with an introduction to culturalist and materialistarguments about non-European societies and their development. Thereader will be impressed with Bromley's ability to impose a sense of orderon the wide-ranging writings of such thinkers as Karl Marx, BassamTibbi, Max Weber, and Edward Said and to put together a cogent analysisof the implications of these schools of thought for Middle East development ...