This collection of essays offers a general analysis of the Middle East and more focused country-by-country examples. Nationalism and Islamism are re-examined to demonstrate their ongoing relevance and relationship to the present-day Arab context and identity. This is followed by a closer look at Islamist movements in Turkey, Iran and Tunisia and how these forces may either come to erode the secular state (as in Turkey and Tunisia) or bolster the Islamic one (in the case of Iran). The author also examines the fate of the eight remaining monarchies of the Arab world and the conditions of their emergence, consolidation and continuation.