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"Egypt is one of the few great empires of antiquity that exists today as a nation state. Despite its extraordinary record of national endurance, the pressures to which Egypt currently is subjected and which are bound to intensify are already straining the ties that hold its political community together, while rendering ever more difficult the task of governing it. In this timely book, leading expert on Egyptian affairs Robert Springborg explains how a country with such a long and impressive history has now arrived at this parlous condition. As Egyptians become steadily more divided by class, religion, region, ethnicity, gender and contrasting views of how, by whom and for what purposes they should be governed, so their rulers become ever more fearful, repressive and unrepresentative. Caught in a downward spiral in which poor governance is both cause and consequence, Egypt is facing a future so uncertain that it could end up resembling neighboring countries that have collapsed under similar loads. The Egyptian "hot spot", Springborg argues, is destined to become steadily hotter, with ominous implications for its peoples, the Middle East and North Africa, and the wider world." (Publisher's description)

This political anthropology is the first to explicitly utilize the family as a basic conceptual tool in understanding a Middle Eastern political system. Springborg scrutinizes the familial, social, and political context of Marei's career, and discusses how the rural nobility of the late nineteenth century has used regional, family, patron-client, and small-group loyalties to maintain its power under Nasser and Sadat

This is the first major study of the alternatives confronting Iraq as it seeks to rebuild its vital oil industry while simultaneously constructing a new political system. A key challenge facing the country is to allocate the revenues oil generates in a way that avoids economic and social instability. Reviewing the present status of the industry, the authors ? including Clement Henry, Massoud Karshenas, Roger Owen, Mona Said and John Sfakianakis ? use comparative analysis to suggest how it might best be rebuilt. Oil and Democracy in Iraq is an important and timely assessment of Iraq's oil indus

Recent discussions of the 'Chinese economic development model', the emergence of an alternative 'Muslim model' over the past quarter century and the faltering globalisation of the 'Washington Consensus' all point to the need to investigate more systematically the nature of these models and their competitive attractions. This is especially the case in the Muslim world which both spans different economic and geographic categories and is itself the progenitor of a development model. The 'Chinese model' has attracted the greatest attention in step with that country's phenomenal growth and therefore provides the primary focus for this book. This volume examines the characteristics of this model and its reception in two major regions of the world - Africa and Latin America. It also investigates the current competition over development models across Muslim contexts. The question of which model or models, if any, will guide development in Muslim majority countries is vital not only for them, but for the world as a whole. This is the first political economy study to address this vital question as well as the closely related issue of the centrality of governance to development.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Transliteration -- 1 EGYPT CONFRONTS THE NEW ORTHODOXY OF DEVELOPMENT -- Egypt's Reluctance to Adopt the New Orthodoxy -- Alternative Scenarios -- Organization of Following Chapters -- Notes -- 2 MUBARAK, THE POLITICAL ELITE, AND THE CHANGING POLITICAL ECONOMY -- Mubarak's Political Style -- Mubarak and the Political Elite -- The Political Elite and the Changing Political Economy -- Mubarak: The Enigma Revealed? -- Notes -- 3 THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE STATE -- Islamic Investment Companies Versus the State -- Strategies to Forestall Government Control -- The First Moment of Truth -- The Government Tries Again -- Rent" Collectors and Fragmented Government -- Segments of the Bourgeoisie -- Entrepreneurial Capitalists and the Strategy of Avoidance -- Parasitic Bourgeoisie and the Strategy of Subversion -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4 THE MILITARY -- The Legacy of Civil-Military Relations -- Mubarak and Abu Ghazala -- Military Self-Sufficiency and the Expansion of Patronage -- Horizontal Military Expansion -- Mubarak, Abu Ghazala, and the Opposition -- The Future of Civil-Military Relations -- Notes -- 5 THE SYSTEM OF POLITICAL CONTROL -- The Carrot -- Ministry of Interior -- The National Democratic Party -- Ministry of Social Affairs -- Exclusionary Corporatism? -- Notes -- 6 SECULAR AND ISLAMICIST OPPOSITION -- The Secular Opposition -- The Limits to Democracy -- Control of Elections -- Parliament -- The Media -- Sources of Opposition Parties' Weakness -- Party Infighting: The Case of the Wafd -- Class Bases of Opposition Parties -- Lack of Coordination Between Opposition Parties -- The Political Vacuum: Explosive or Just Empty? -- The Islamicist Opposition -- The Reemergence of Islamic Activism in Mubarak's Egypt -- Are Islamicists Practicing Taqiya?.

Reviewed: The Gulf Region: Economic Development and Diversification (4 vols.), ed. by Giaccomo Luciani, Steffen Hertog, Eckart Woertz, and Richard Youngs. Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2012. ; Resources Blessed: Diversification and the Gulf Development Model (Vol. 1), ed. by Giacomo Luciani. ; National Employment, Migration and Education in the GCC (Vol. 2), ed. by Steffen Hertog. ; GCC Financial Markets: The World's New Money Centers (Vol. 3), ed. by Eckert Woertz. ; The GCC in the Global Economy (Vol. 4), ed. by Richard Youngs. ; The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/67.2.3 ; Giacomo Luciani, the senior editor of this four volume set, along with Hazem Beblawi laid the conceptual foundations for Arab rentier states a quarter of a century ago.1 He and his team of some 40 researchers have now revisited this concept as part of a broader effort to describe and analyze the political economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The very title of the flagship volume edited by Luciani, Resources Blessed: Diversification and the Gulf Development Model, suggests revision to the prevailing, Luciani-influenced orthodoxy that the resource curse and its attendant rentierism are inherently inconsistent with economic diversification and development. Revisionism implied by the title is indeed borne out as the editor and authors present a largely positive account of the economic accomplishments and future of the GCC states, distancing themselves, sometimes explicitly, not only from negative prognostications for rentier states, but even from the present applicability of the concept itself to the "mothers" of all rentier states, those that comprise the GCC.