This book is the first to apply ideas about international and world society to the Middle East. It brings together a distinguished cast of theorists and Middle East experts who combine their knowledge to provide a fresh view of this troubled but important region. For those interested in the Middle East, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the region's history and how its own traditions have mixed, often uncomfortably, with the political structures imposed by the expansion of Western international society. It reveals the powerful and ongoing tensions among the Western-defined political order, the post-colonial state system, and the strong transnational cultural elements in the region. For International Relations theorists it offers a pathbreaking application of the English school's central ideas at the regional level. It shows both the problems and the opportunities of thinking about international and world society in a regional context, and uses the insights from that to cast new light on what it means to talk about international society at the global level.

The Middle East and Conceptions of 'International Society'; F.Halliday
The Middle East through English School Theory; B.Buzan
The Ottoman Empire and its Precedents from the Perspective of English School Theory; A.K.Bennison
The Middle East Encounter with the Expansion of European International Society; A.N.Yurdusev
The Primary Institutions of the Middle Eastern Regional Interstate Society; A.Gonzalez-Pelaez
The Secondary Institutions of the Middle Eastern Regional Interstate Society; S.W.Murden
Arab Nationalism(s) in Transformation: From Arab Interstate Societies to an Arab-Islamic World Society; M.Valbjørn
Islam, the Middle East, and the Pan-Islamic Movement; S.H.Hashmi
Order and Change in the Middle East: A Neo-Gramscian Twist on the International Society Approach; R.Hinnebusch
Conclusions; B.Buzan & A.Gonzalez Pelaez

BARRY BUZAN is Professor of International Relations at the LSE, UK, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Honorary Professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities. Recent publications include Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver); and From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2004).

ANA GONZALEZ-PELAEZ is an independent writer and advisor on international affairs, trade and development. She has served as a consultant in the Middle East and worked in broadcast news media. Publications include Human Rights and World Trade (2005).