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A Political Economy of the Middle East.

Article Excerpt
A Political Economy of the Middle East, Third Edition, by Alan Richards and John Waterbury. Westview Press, 2008. 474 pages. $50.00.

Alan Richards and John Waterbury's A Political Economy of the Middle East has always been a bit hard to characterize. It is clearly intended to be used in serious university courses about the socioeconomic problems facing the region, but it is much more than a textbook. Starting with the first edition in 1990, the volume has exposed several generations of policy makers and concerned observers to the complexity and interdependence of the economic, social, political, religious and historical forces shaping events in the region. Yet, much to the dismay of some Middle East experts, Richards and Waterbury do not subscribe to the notion that the problems confronting this part of the world are fundamentally different than those found elsewhere.

The strength of their approach is their application of a unique set of premises centering on three universal elements: strategies of economic transformation, the state agencies and actors that seek to implement them, and the social actors such as interest groups that react to and are shaped by them. "Each of the three vertices entails questions about the nature of the state, the emergence of economic interests, and the effects of development strategies." More precisely (p. 8),

* Economic growth and structural transformation have unintended outcomes to which state actors must respond.

* The state structure and fiscal, monetary and trade policy affect the rate and...

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