This book explores the conditions of state formation and survival in the Middle East. Based on Historical Sociology, it provides a model for study of the state in the Arab world and a theory to explain its survival. Examining states as a 'process', the author argues that what emerged in the Middle East in the beginning of the twentieth century are 'social fields'--where states form and deform--and not states as defined by Max Weber. He explores the constitutions of these fields--their cultural, material and political structures--and identifies three stages of state development in which...