The internal Arab, Iranian and Israeli debates on civil society in the 1980s and 1990s have only partly found their way into Western studies on the issue. An analysis of the discursive structures of the local debates, which represents the major objective of the current edited volume, may help shifting the nexus of the academic discussion to Middle Eastern perceptions and actors. Amr Hamzawy analyses the Arab sociological and political discussion on civil society, depending on the intellectual literature of the last ten years. Asghar Schirazi distinguishes in his contribution between three central intellectual currents in Iran: Islamist, leftist, and liberal, each of which can be further subdivided. The article of Angelika Timm explores the historical development of the Israeli civil society and addresses some important spheres of civil activities. All authors have been working over the last four years together in a research project on Civil Society and Processes of Transformation in the Middle East at the Center for Middle Eastern Politics of the Free University of Berlin under the supervision of Friedemann Buettner, chairman of the centre.