Informal Power in the Greater Middle East: Hidden Geographies.

• Author: Abidor, Pascal
• Position: Book review

Informal Power in the Greater Middle East

Hidden Geographies

Edited by Luca Anceschi, Gennaro Gervasio and Andrea Teti

London: Routledge, 2014, 226 pages, $145, ISBN 9780415624367.

This volume examines the relationship between the formal and informal spheres of power and is meant to serve as a corrective to overly "statist" political analyses that focus entirely on formal power institutions. Analyses that focus exclusively on formal political spheres grant them exaggerated strength and denude informal mechanisms and actors of any political relevance or power. The Arab Spring has made it clear that the formal power of the state in the Middle East is contestable and changeable with the informal playing a significant role. The editors of this volume seek to bring attention to the informal mechanisms that are available for use in authoritarian regimes. The case studies in this collection look into "the political dynamics developing inside, in parallel to, and/or beyond institutional fora;" what is termed the "hidden geographies of power" (p. 3). The essays in this collection consist of case studies into the dialectical relationship between the formal and informal spheres--how each shapes and is shaped by the other and how the mechanisms of one sphere can be of use to ends pertaining to the other sphere.

The cases are drawn from the "Greater Middle East" whose geographical scope, for the purposes of this book, consists of "the typical" Middle East and North African countries as well as the "five independent republics of post-Soviet Central Asia" (p. 1). Except for a single comparative essay on Egypt and Libya, all but one of the essays examine the formal/informal power dialectic within a specific country in the form of one of three dynamics: 1) the wider political audience that actors engage with as evidenced by the Arab Spring uprisings; 2) the patronage and clientele networks that are used to exchange formal legitimacy (votes) for "informal recognition of localized powers"; and 3) civil society as the arena for the "complex interplay of formal and informal spheres in the production of specific political practices, both democratic and authoritarian" (pp. 4-5). These dynamics serve as the typologies of relations between the formal and informal that each of the essays addresses. Though the volume is slim, it is comprised of fourteen highly informative essays, including a final chapter that serves as a conclusion and a more thorough elaboration of...