Simon Bromley seeks to reformulate the central questions involved in the study of state formation. He builds a comparative framework based on an examination of key developmental processes in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and offers a range of substantive theses on the place of democracy and Islam in the region. His findings explain a very large part of what appears to be significant in the emergence of the modern Middle East.
Rethinking Middle East Politics presents a new way of analyzing politics in the Middle East, offering a perspective that has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally and for the social and political theory of modernity.