Rethinking Middle East Politics By Simon Bromley. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994, 203 + viii pp.

Abstract

The process by which the modem Middle East has taken its present
political shape and continues to develop is the subject of a large and diverse
realm of scholarship. Authors have examined this topic from a variety of
academic and political points of view, but few have been able to classify
the assortment of past works in a coherent way while formulating a valid
new approach to this complex area of study. Simon Bromley's most recent
book, Rethinking Middle East Politics, is an ambitious work that is more
successful 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 tate
formation and political development in the Middle East while highlighting
both the distinctive aspects of the region's development and its similarities
to other nondeveloped areas. The book is not flawless; Bromley makes
several claims that may not be as universaJly accepted as he suggests and
supports the modem Middle East case studies with only a limited number
of references. Despite these relatively mild shortcomings, Rethinking
Middle East Politics as a whole provides a compelling and often provocative
description of the Janus-faced nature of Middle East state formation
and political development.
Bromley begins with an introduction to culturalist and materialist
arguments about non-European societies and their development. The
reader will be impressed with Bromley's ability to impose a sense of order
on the wide-ranging writings of such thinkers as Karl Marx, Bassam
Tibbi, Max Weber, and Edward Said and to put together a cogent analysis
of the implications of these schools of thought for Middle East development ...