Saïd Amir Arjomand is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies. He is the author of The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Organization and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (The University of Chicago Press, 1984), The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oxford University Press, 1988); and the editor of several books, including Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction (Leiden : E.J. Brill, 2007), and Constitutional Politics in the Middle East (London: Hart Publishers, 2008).