Elizabeth F. Thompson. Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East.

Abstract

Middle Eastern events of recent years have left many observers perplexed. What have the protesting masses hoped to achieve, and what accounts for their short-term successes or failures? Many people were surprised by the emergence of protest movements in the Middle East and imagined them as a series of spontaneous eruptions. Western intelligence agencies were likewise caught unawares. But what about the people who live in in the region, or scholars of the area? Some of them were surprised, too, but Elizabeth F. Thompson would not have been among them. Thompson places her insightful new book squarely at the intersection of current events and the last couple of centuries of human history in the Middle East. In doing so she contributes meaningfully, and with originality, to contemporary and historical discussions about democracy and popular movements in the region. She argues that the peoples of the Middle East have sought justice and representation, variably understood and expressed over time, and that the account of their quest is a worthwhile and important universal human story. The book is a new “people's history” of the modern Middle East.