ABSTRACT
This book has so far viewed Middle Eastern politics from an almost entirely state-centred perspective. It has also been based on the proposition that in an authoritarian or authoritarian/rentier state there are few individuals or groups who can act independently of the state within the domestic political arena. Clearly, it was not always the case. In the late colonial and early independence period there was scope for such a type of political activity, either in those regions which the state had only just begun to penetrate or by groups which had sources of wealth and power largely outside state control, such as rural landed property or privately owned economic enterprises. And at the end of the twentieth century, after a decade or two of structural adjustment and economic reform, there were many social analysts who seemed to believe that non-state acting could begin to flourish once again under the general rubric of a return to, or promotion of, what is widely called Civil Society.
