This book is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of constitutional politics and constitution-making in the Middle East.

Saïd Amir Arjomand is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the founder and President (1996-2002, 2005-08) of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies.

Introduction
Saïd Amir Arjomand
Islamic Empires, the Ottoman Empire, and the Circle of Justice
Linda T. Darling
Islam and Constitutionalism since the Nineteenth Century: The Significance and Peculiarities of Iran
Saïd Amir Arjomand
Bargaining and Imposing Constitutions: Private and Public Interests in the Iranian, Afghani, and Iraqi Constitutional Experiments
Nathan J. Brown
The Respective Roles of Human Rights and Islam: An Unresolved Conundrum for Middle Eastern Constitutions
Ann Elizabeth Mayer
The Guardian of the Regime: The Turkish Constitutional Court in Comparative Perspective
Hootan Shambayati
Constitution, Legitimacy and Democracy in Turkey
Mehmet Fevzi Bilgin
Crafting a Constitution for Afghanistan
Barnett R. Rubin
From Interim to Permanent Constitution in Iraq
Andrew Arato