Gov 365N/MES 323K
Questions for Classes 17 and 18: April 6 and 8 2010
1. After looking at Kamal Labidi's article celebrating Tunisia's 50th anniversary since independence, can you discuss the ironies of this bully regime's hosting of the the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November 2005.
2. Introducing bully regimes: Egypt, Tunisia, and possibly the Palestinian Authority: resting on the institutional power of the military/security/party apparatus - and state-based patronage networks.
3. Why did Gamal Abdul Nasser (1952-70) attack the mutamassirun and the indigenous Egyptian capitalists? To what extent did the intifah of Anwar Sadat (1970-81) revive Egyptian capitalism?
4. How much privatization and structural adjustment can bully regimes afford to undergo without endangering their political stability? What are the principal sources of patronage in these regimes?
5. Why is Tunisia a bully regime rather than bunker regime, and how could your professor possibly label it a "rogue" - like some of those "axis of evil" regimes?
6. The problem of corruption: not military clans and mafias but rather public/private sector companies. Note the rise of the civil contractor, Osman Ahmad Osman, 1964-81. What are the similarities and differences between the crony capitalism characteristic of bully regimes with private sector development in Algeria?
7. The problems of public management of publicly owned banks, such as Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, or the Société Tunisienne de Banque. If we have time, I will discuss the Banque Franco-Tunisienne (founded 1879), 1982-1988.