Unipolarity and the Middle East. By Birthe Hansen. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. 288p. $59.95. War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East. Edited by Steven Heydemann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 372p. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. “Pariah States” and Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan. By Tim Niblock. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. 241p. $49.95.

Extract

Scholars of Middle Eastern studies in the last decade often were preoccupied with two major problems. First, the democratization that has spread over most of the globe seems to have missed the Middle East. Second, there appears to be a growing gap between international relations and comparative politics theory, on the one hand, and Middle East studies, on the other. In seeking to explain why, some point to the highly politicized scholarship that can still be found in Middle East studies. Others argue that the theorists simply have not tried hard enough to fit the special nature of the Middle East into their theoretical models, or that Middle Eastern scholars have not tried hard enough to deal with theory. Two of the three books under review, by Hansen and Heydemann, do a great deal to narrow the gap between theory and reality in the Middle East. The book by Niblock is an example of the kind of highly politicized scholarship that is still found too often in Middle Eastern studies.