Politics in the Middle East

This chapter focuses on types of governance, law and politics, elite rule, civil society, news media and politics, human rights, minority groups in the Middle East, women in the Middle East, and foreign affairs. The idea of globalization suggests that political issues and institutions are universal, to include such things as human rights, democracy, civil liberties, and other concepts common to most liberal democracies. A political understanding of the region must blend in its unique background when considering its adaptability to modern political institutions common to Western experience. As the postcolonial period dawned in the Middle East, mostly after World War II, numerous actors, ideas, and social forces interacted to shape governance and polity in the modern Middle East. Political culture formed one nexus of postcolonial development in the region, though authorities disagree on its content and form. Middle Eastern political systems range between authoritarian and democratic rule, with most regimes somewhere between the extremes of despotic rule and democracy.