Focusing on the family and career of the prominent Egyptian politician Sayed Bey Marei, Robert Springborg provides in this volume a political ethnography on the changing roles of the family and other social units in Egypt's political economy. He traces the rise to power of the rural nobility from the late nineteenth century, demonstrating how members of this class used family, regional, patron-client, and small-group loyalties to maintain and enhance their powers and privileges under the regimes of Nasser and Sadat. In this context the author also investigates the complexities between provincial and national politics, and between the bureaucratic/technocratic elite and the political elite of the country. Sayed Marei's career provides the ideal focus for Springborg's ethnography. From a wealthy rural family that habitually sent at least one of its members to parliament, he began his political career in 1944-45, inheriting his family's seat in the Chamber of Deputies. In 1952, he emerged as the new revolutionary government's director of agrarian reform and became thereafter a fixture in the Nasserite political elite. Under Sadat, to whom he was related by marriage, Marei enjoyed even greater prominence. He served as cabinet minister, head of the Arab Socialist Union, speaker of parliament, diplomat extraordinaire, special adviser to the president, and secretary general of the much publicized World Food Conference. With a political career spanning five generations and three regimes, Sayed Marei built a significant reputation for himself in the Arab World. Rather than imposing objective categories upon political behavior, Sprinborg instead delves into the subjective reality of Egyptian political life. He explains how politicians pursue their goals and what associations they form and use, how they themselves perceive politics to operate, and then why they behave as they do. This work is the first to explicitly utilize the family as a basic conceptual tool to understand a Middle-Eastern political system and thus will be of great value to those interested in the history, politics, anthropology, and sociology of the region and, more generally, the Third World.

The creation of the Egyptian monarchy in 1922, under King Fuad II, opened contests and debates over fundamental cultural questions, particularly definitions of Egyptian modernity, rule and identity. Here, James Whidden looks at the political, cultural and intellectual landscapes of Egypt between the wars, from the nationalist agitations for independence in 1919, the rise of the Wafd - first under Saad Zaghul and then Mustafa El-Nahas Pasha - and the rise and fall of different political and power brokers in the period such as Abd al-Latif al-Makkabati or Abd al-Khaliq Tharwa. Whidden therefore focuses on the different interpretations of the nature of Egyptian politics, highlighting the ways in which patriotism and elitism, Islam and tradition, colonial manipulations, and ideological politics combine. In particular, he examines how monarchists, like Zaki Fahmi and Diaeddine Saleh, attempted to neutralise opponents through cultural works, patronage and political party contests. The period under examination was to a large extent defined by the 'revolution' of 1919 and the constitutional and electoral processes that followed. The sectors of society involved in this were the effendiyya and the notables - such as Zaghul. But these were soon dominated by the monarch, as the Wafd party allied with the king. Bearing this in mind, Whidden examines how these notables attempts to mobilise the people in revolutionary activity, electoral contest and the formation of political party organization in this period. Although a 'liberal constitution' was written by an appointed constitutional commission in 1923, Whidden argues that the disagreements it occasioned suggest that politics in the interwar period was very much an attempt to redefine or rewrite that constitution to the differing assumptions of liberal, nationalists and monarchists. Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt is thus a vital resource for those interested in Middle East history, as well as intellectual developments within the region.

This book addresses two important matters of current concern to Middle East scholars: firstly, the nature of the Egyptian state and society and the interactive process between them and secondly, how change, which would finally lead to development, can be initiated. The book argues that the Egyptian case represents a weak authoritarian state, which through its coercive and repressive policies towards various societal forces, political parties, professional associations and organisations and individuals, creates a weak society. Individual behaviour in urban and rural communities, sometimes viewed as signs of the strength of societal forces, is seen here as a symptom of a weak and fragmented society. The existence of a weak society in turn impedes government objectives and hinders the implementation of developmental policies and programmes, further weakening the state. This being the case, change has to be initiated externally in both the political and economic spheres.

Winslow Williams Clifford is one of the few historians so far who have addressed the history and culture of the so-called Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517) on the basis of theoretical models. This volume is a posthumous publication of his doctoral thesis, submitted in 1995 at the University of Chicago. Through his skillful application of social theory, Clifford succeeded in providing highly convincing evidence that the Mamluk rulers did not - as was maintained fo a long time - constitute a static form of "oriental despotism" but was, rather, a highly differentiated society. It was primarily based on compliance with a complex system of order that had established itself during the rule of the first sultans.

Despite its authoritarian political structure, Egypt's government has held competitive, multi-party parliamentary elections for more than 30 years. This book argues that, rather than undermining the durability of the Mubarak regime, competitive parliamentary elections ease important forms of distributional conflict, particularly conflict over access to spoils. In a comprehensive examination of the distributive consequences of authoritarian elections in Egypt, Lisa Blaydes examines the triadic relationship between Egypt's ruling regime, the rent-seeking elite that supports the regime, and the ordinary citizens who participate in these elections. She describes why parliamentary candidates finance campaigns to win seats in a legislature that lacks policymaking power, as well as why citizens engage in the costly act of voting in such a context.

An examination of the extent to which Nasser's 1952 coup d'etat brought about significant changes in the basic social, political and cultural structures of Egypt.

Examines the system of authoritarianism in eight Arab republics, including life under these regimes and the mechanisms underpinning their resilience.

Why do many Asian, African, and Latin American states have such difficulty in directing the behavior of their populations--in spite of the resources at their disposal? And why do a small number of other states succeed in such control? What effect do failing laws and social policies have on the state itself? In answering these questions, Joel Migdal takes a new look at the role of the state in the third world. Strong Societies and Weak States offers a fresh approach to the study of state-society relations and to the possibilities for economic and political reforms in the third world. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, state institutions have established a permanent presence among the populations of even the most remote villages. A close look at the performance of these agencies, however, reveals that often they operate on principles radically different from those conceived by their founders and creators in the capital city. Migdal proposes an answer to this paradox: a model of state-society relations that highlights the state's struggle with other social organizations and a theory that explains the differing abilities of states to predominate in those struggles.

In this 2010 edition of their book on the economic development of the Middle East and North Africa, Clement Henry and Robert Springborg reflect on what has happened to the region's economy since 2001. How have the various countries in the Middle East responded to the challenges of globalization and to the rise of political Islam, and what changes, for better or for worse, have occurred? Utilizing the country categories they applied in the previous book and further elaborating the significance of the structural power of capital and Islamic finance, they demonstrate how over the past decade the monarchies (as exemplified by Jordan, Morocco and those of the Gulf Cooperation Council) and the conditional democracies (Israel, Turkey and Lebanon) continue to do better than the military dictatorships or 'bullies' (Egypt, Tunisia and now Iran) and 'the bunker states' (Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen).

Egypt is a country of its people. What has been the effect on its inhabitants of the 2011 revolution and subsequent developments? In 2013, a conference held under the auspices of Cairo Papers in Social Science examined this issue from the points of view of anthropologists, historians, political scientists, psychologists, and urban planners. The papers collected here reveal the strategies that various actors employed in this situation. Contributors: Ellis Goldberg, David Sims, Yasmine Ahmed, Deena Abdelmonem, Dina Makram-Ebeid, Clement Henry, Sandrine Gamblin, Hans Christian Korsholm Nielsen, Zeinab Abul-Magd