While previous multi-author books have surveyed political parties in the Middle East (notably The Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties, published by Facts on File, 2nd edition, 1987), none has the attempted the detail and comprehensiveness of the volume under review. Still, the editor goes a bit far in trumpeting his volume as "an excellent reference work that is unique in its field." More accurate would be to say that with some exceptions (excellent analyses of Morocco by David M. Mednicoff and on Turkey by Jacob M. Landau), it provides a workmanlike and useful overview.
Fourteen chapters concentrate on single countries, ranging from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east, from the Sudan in the south to Turkey in the north. Predictably, the chapters on Lebanon and Turkey take the most space, given the complex political life in those places, followed by Algeria and Israel. Libya requires the fewest pages, followed by Tunisia and the Sudan. One chapter deals with all the Gulf Cooperation Council countries together (they get so little space on account of the rudimentary state of their political parties), and one covers the Palestinians. The book concludes with a particularly helpful genealogy of parties, making it possible to see how often one begat another.
Two commonsensical patterns emerge from the many details: political parties have greatly proliferated in the past six years, since the collapse of the Berlin wall; and fundamentalist parties have replaced nationalist ones as the region's most dynamic.
