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As the leading college-level textbook on political systems in the Middle East and North Africa, the fourth edition of The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa is comprehensive in scope and up-to-date in coverage. This edition addresses changes in the Middle East such as weakening public-sector economics in oil-producing states, the communications revolution, and continued rapid population growth. Contributors are highly qualified scholars and professionals writing on each country, all following a common outline, yet focusing on the particulars of the political system under discussion.

Rapid social, economic, and political change is endemic to the Middle East and is often more revolutionary than evolutionary in nature. In many ways, the entire political landscape of the Middle East has been transformed in the past decade in the realm of both international relations and domestic politics: The collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the cold war, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait have all had a profound effect on relations among states within the region and between those states and countries outside the region. In this revised edition, Long and Reich provide comprehensive and up-to-date analyses of many critical contemporary events and issues. The contributors explain how Desert Storm isolated Iraq and brought Syria back into the mainstream of Arab politics, contributing to the revival of the Arab-Israeli peace process. They also show how the return of a Labor government in Israel has allowed the peace process to go forward. Evaluating the economic costs of the Kuwait war and the continuing oil glut, the authors find that resulting changes in the domestic economies of the oil-producing states have created additional pressures for social and political change. The most profound change in government and politics, however, is the rise of Islam as the idiom of political discourse among moderates as well as extremists.