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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).

Can production for global markets help business groups to mobilize collectively? Under what conditions does globalization enable the private sector to develop independent organizational bases and create effective relationships with the state? Focusing on varied Moroccan and Tunisian responses to trade liberalization in the 1990s, Melani Cammett argues that two constitutive dimensions of business-government relations shape business responses to global economic opening: the balance of power between business and the state before economic opening and the preexisting business class structure. These two dimensions combine to form different configurations of business-government relations, including'distant'and'close'linkages, leading to divergent interests and, hence, strategic behavior by industrialists. The book also extends the analysis to additional country cases, including India, Turkey, and Taiwan, and examines how different patterns of business-government relations affect processes of industrial upgrading.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century countries in the Middle East and North Africa contend with the threats and opportunities of economic globalization, the driving force of change in the contemporary world. As the authors confirm in their straightforward and, at times, irreverent analysis of the regions'response to these challenges, it is globalization which is the key to an understanding of economic reform. Through an investigation of the structures of state and civil society, including financial systems, they also demonstrate that there is a direct correlation between economic performance and democratization. In other words, the more liberal the polity, the more effective is its economy in responding to globalization. With its interesting and incisive approach to the politics and economics of the Middle East and North Africa, this will be an essential purchase for students and policy-makers and anyone trying to come to grips with economic globalization generally.