Islam and Democracy in the Middle East » (1st Edition)

Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is codirector, with Marc Plattner, of the International Forum for Democratic Studies. He is also coeditor, with Marc Plattner, of the Journal of Democracy and of other collections of essays available from Johns Hopkins, including The Global Resurgence of Democracy, Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, and The Global Divergence of Democracies.Daniel Brumberg is associate professor of government at Georgetown University.

Thirty articles reprinted from issues of the Journal of Democracy investigate why the Middle East is the only region of the world to have been largely untouched by the third wave of global democratizations since 1974. Political scientists, most from or working in western countries, look at such aspects as the decline of pluralism in Mubarak's Egypt, Iran's remarkable election, and the sources of enlightened Muslim thought. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Foreign Affairs

The 30 short essays in this collection (all but one taken from recent issues of the Journal of Democracy) include individual country studies as well as more general considerations of the relationship between Islam and democracy. No clear general findings emerge, but the collection provides a rich lode of empirical examples and sober working hypotheses about democratic prospects. The country studies of Iran, Turkey, and several Arab states illustrate the diversity of governmental and constitutional forms in the Middle East, in order to demonstrate that a democratic discourse is well underway. But unfortunately, that discourse is often mere theater; no lack of ballot boxes, as Mohamed Talbi observed, all well stuffed.