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Professor Rita Nealon Cooley died on October 1, 2006, in her home in
New York City. She was born in New York in 1919 and attended a
Catholic School in the Bronx where she won the Classics prize and
was the Class Valedictorian. After graduating from Hunter College in
1940, cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and as winner of
the Constitutional Law prize, she was awarded the Penfield
Fellowship by the department of politics at NYU in 1943 and began
taking courses in the graduate school.

A puzzling issue for those of us who study the modern Middle East is the slow—and in some instances nonexistent—progress toward more open and inclusive political systems. Why does authoritarianism persist in the Middle East? Why have regimes in many parts of the world, from East Europe to Latin America and elsewhere, made successful transitions from authoritarianism while the Middle East has lagged behind? Is the Middle Eastern exceptionalism likely to endure?What makes these questions more paradoxical is the presence of a number of democrats and reformers in the Middle East, as well as human rights organizations and civic groups, that attempt to provide a check on abuses of power and try to promote political reform. Moreover, there are regimes such as Israel and Turkey where democratic political systems, with limitations, exist and function reasonably successfully. Although in a few other polities (Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Kuwait, and so on) semi-regular competitive elections for high offices are held, exclusionary tactics are used routinely to keep some individuals and groups from becoming active players in the political arena.

This essay reviews six recent books on modern Iranian politics. It suggests that Iranian politics can be analyzed from the perspective of four basic traditions and models: monarchical, liberal nationalist, religious, and leftist. Each model abstracts the essential elements of the political system and demonstrates the dominance of a certain perspective. The first three of these models have been implemented in post—World War II Iran, and even the left has had an impact. The essay concludes by stating that current Iranian domestic politics can be better understood by paying attention to five enduring features: historical continuity of the nation-state, steady increase in state power, persistence of patrimonialism, intense interaction between domestic and foreign policies particularly as it relates to control over oil, and the vitality of civil society even under the Islamic Republic.