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"Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening of state institutions. Yet, the state is not the only or the primary arena shaping how citizens, service providers and state officials engage in actions that constitute politics and development. These individuals are members of religious orders, ethnic communities, and other groups that make claims on them, creating incentives that shape their actions. Recognizing how individuals experience these claims and view the choices before them is essential to understanding political processes and development outcomes. This Element establishes a framework elucidating these forces, which is key to knowledge accumulation, designing future research and effective programming. Taking an institutional approach, this Element explains how the salience of arenas of authority associated with various communities and the nature of social institutions within them affect politics and development. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core"--

Part 1. Overview. - The making of the modern Middle East / Michael Gasper. - Social change in the Middle East / Valentine M. Moghadam and Tabitha Decker. - Institutions and governance / Ellen Lust. - The political economy of development in the Middle East / Melani Cammett. - Religion, society, and politics in the Middle East /Robert Lee and Lihi Ben Shitrit. - Actors, public opinion, and participation / Amaney Jamal and Lina Khatib. - The Israeli-Palestinian conflict / Mark Tessler. - Regional international relations / Marc Lynch. - International politics of the Middle East / Francesco Cavatorta. - Part 2. Profiles. - Algeria / Lahouari Addi. - Egypt / Tarek Masoud. - Iran / Mehrzad Boroujerdi. - Iraq / Eric Davis. - Israel / Lihi Ben Shitrit. - Jordan / Laurie A. Brand. - Kuwait / Heshem AI-Awadi. - Lebanon / Paul Salem. - Libya / Amanda Kadlec. - Morocco / Driss Maghraoui and Saloua Zerhouni. - Palestinian Authority / Benoit Challand. - Persian Gulf States / Katja Niethammer. - Saudi Arabia / Pascal Menoret. - Syria / Raymond Hinnebusch. - Tunisia / Jeffrey A. Coupe and Hamadi Redissi. - Turkey / Mine Eder ; Yemen / Sarah Phillips

"This book examines how ruling elites manage and manipulate their political opposition in the Middle East. In contrast to discussions of government-opposition relations that focus on how rulers either punish or co-opt opponents, this book focuses on the effect of institutional rules governing the opposition. It argues that rules determining who is and is not allowed to participate in the formal political arena affect not only the relationships between opponents and the state, but also those between various opposition groups."--Jacket

Political scientists, development specialists, and policymakers assume a central place for states and state action as they define problems and design solutions. They ascribe to the state dominance over all other social organizations, viewing it as pervasive and inevitably triumphant. Even scholars such as Joel Migdal, Timothy Mitchell, and James Scott, who focus on the boundaries of the state, portray the state as more organized, technologically savvy, and capable of extending its power than social counterparts, putting the latter on the defensive. Scholars and policymakers alike also have arrogated to the state the moral monopoly to pursue certain imperatives that other organizational forms can and do aspire to provide. These include providing security and protection from predation, allocating scarce resources, and arbitrating values and interests in society.

This response points to three critical problems inExplaining the Unexpected. First, the authors' contention that scholars ignored "everyday contestation," including changing citizen-state relations, emerging venues of political participation, and the potential for mobilization, is based on a selective reading of the literature on politics in the Arab world before 2011. Second, their assertion that existing paradigms hindered scholars' ability to understand change mischaracterizes the literature on enduring authoritarianism. Scholars did not argue that regime breakdown wasimpossiblebefore 2011 but rather sought to understand why authoritarian regimes were sustained. Long before the uprisings, they recognized the factors that could make breakdown possible. Third, Howard and Walters' conclusion that Middle East scholars' fundamental paradigms and their focus on regime type will lead them to treat "utterly remarkable waves of mass mobilization as politically inconsequential" is misplaced. The literature has and continues to explore a wide range of issues that extend far beyond democratization, and recent scholarship has examined varied aspects of the diverse political processes and outcomes witnessed since 2011.Explaining the Unexpectedmisses the mark on many points, but it does provide a useful platform for scholars to reflect on problems facing comparative politics. These include the blinders resulting from the normative biases underpinning the discipline and the need for a nuanced discussion about how, and to what extent, scholars facing rapid, regional transformations can learn from the study of similar experiences in other regions.

Abstract: This article reconsiders the relationship between authoritarian elections and democratization. Examining legislative elections in the Middle East, it argues that elections are best understood as "competitive clientelism," a competition between elites over privileged access to a limited set of state resources that they can then distribute to their clients. This drives the behavior of voters and candidates in systematic ways that promote proregime parliaments and allow incumbent elites to manage elections largely through institutional rules rather than extralegal manipulation. The article concludes by considering mechanisms that may more effectively help to foster democratization, given the logic of authoritarian elections.

It appears that elections increase chances for a smooth transition to democracy only in competitive authoritarian regimes where political instability already exists. This essay explores the process the author calls 'competitive clientelism' whereby elections supply ruling elites in authoritarian regimes opportunities to compete over limited sets of state resources that they then distribute to local elites a structure that reduces demand for any change to democracy. Adapted from the source document.