Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government. By Nathan J. Brown. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 244p. $65.50 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Extract

This work is by a serious scholar who had previously written a fine book on peasant politics in Egypt. Interest in constitutionalism in the Arab world may be dismissed as naive given the notorious reputation of the region for autocracy and dictatorships. Yet Nathan Brown insists on taking constitutional developments in the region seriously, and he meticulously covers most constitutional developments over the span of the last century. But the book could have been easily condensed into a scholarly article. In the first part of the book, for example, which stretches into page 94, he provides the reader with a blow-by-blow account of constitutional developments in select Middle East countries. It contains very few insights, and the author breaks no new grounds; the developments were previously covered in many other works (for example, Elie Kedourie, Politics in the Middle East, 1992).