State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan's Identity.(Review) (book review)

By Marc Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 327p. $49.50 cloth, $18.50 paper.

Jordan is a relatively poor, weak country situated in a highly conflictual neighborhood. It has been very permeable to the shifting ideological winds of Arabism and has faced divisive questions of national identity and purpose (to the point of civil war in 1970-71). It also has, since the parliamentary elections of 1989, experienced both a substantial political opening and a subsequent restriction of public freedoms.

For all these reasons, Jordan is an excellent laboratory in which to ...

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