Business Politics in the Middle East

The three academic editors, attached to the London School of Economics (Hertog), Science Po in Paris (Luciani) and Exeter University (Valerie), produced an extremely well informed, researched and documented book of truly impressive breadth and depth. Its Notes, Index, and Bibliography alone cover 88 pages. Leaving out much of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the book focuses on Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Research for it was mainly done before the Arab Spring and in anticipation of the possible fallout of an Arab Summer: The volume’s prefatory remarks and concluding passages do indeed catch up with current events. In substance, its focus is on micro-business executed by the Arab middle class, mostly still weak because State-dependent Arab bourgeoisie is in fear of democratization. Therefore, the authors only see weak Muslim civil societies in an Arab world still run by camouflaged elitist, and thus exclusionary, corporatism and repressive, white-washing crony capitalist regimes.