The article examines strengthening of the statehood in the Middle East. It has become one of the key topics in political discourse on the Middle East last years. The author makes use of Douglas North’s theory of social orders. Its application to the regional situation allows to overcome the limitations of the country analysis and to determine the main vectors of external development assistance to the countries of the region. One needs fundamentally different approaches towards Syria, Libya, and Yemen that nowadays face armed conflicts, and towards relatively stable countries. In the case of the conflict countries, the consolidation of statehood is linked to the problems of conflict resolution, creation of stable dominant coalitions based on mutual guarantees. As examples of stable countries, the author takes the cases of Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. He analyses the specifics of access to rent, formation of elites, organizational and institutional development, and violence-control mechanisms.