THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Are the MENA states as presently configured are capable of implementing innovative and rewarding development strategies? How are they being integrated into the global economy, and with what political as well as economic consequences? This seminar will survey theories and practices of economic development in the Middle East and North Africa, responding to the challenges of globalization. The guidelines of the "Washington Consensus," perhaps evolving into a new "Barcelona Consensus" shared by development economists of the United States, the European Community, and international financial in stitutions, will be analyzed in light of the region's political and economic realities and contrasted with other approaches to development articulated by regional and international actors. Special attention will be paid to the evolution of financial systems in the region.

You will acquire detailed understandings of at least two regimes and their respective approaches to economic development in light of their regional and international positions and domestic political strategies.

You will be expected to make three oral presentations in class, no more than ten minutes long, accompanied by a class handout of no more than one single-spaced page and/or spreadsheet. At least one of them should cover one of the online publications of international institutions listed below, such as one of the Arab Human Development reports or World Bank MENA Outlook yearbooks. Since you will each be focusing on a couple of countries, one of your presentations might be on a problem such as renewable water supply and usage (for water, go to the UNDP's pogar.org's Arabstats where you will find a link to aquastats, enter their database and download the stats on your 2 countries). On the arabstats.org home page you will also find a convenient set of sources for MENA (not just Arab) countries for analyzing other issues of political economy. Or you may select a book on our recommended list or in consultation with the instructor. Try then to focus on one or two country chapters if it a collection of edited studies such as Heydemann's Networks of Privilege or Henry and Wilson, The Politics of Islamic Finance.

In addition you are to prepare a 20-25 pp. research paper, focused on some theme (such as, what, if any, are the interrelationships between economic and political reform? or, what should the state be doing--or not doing--to maximize economic development, either in general or in some particular sector? or how, if at all, do high oil revenues impact upon governance in "rentier" economies?) and illustrating your argument with references to at least two political economies of countries of your choice. The paper should be based partly on assigned class readings and may also include materials you have presented in class. You will be expected to download and utilize in your paper some of the data from the World Bank, and/or Human Development (UNDP), SESRTCIC, and Oil (from BP) that have been prepared for you on our home page. A preliminary draft is due Wed., Oct. 6, hard copy in class to give a classmate for criticism and an electronic copy sent to me at chenry@mail.utexas.edu. Please also mail me elecronic versions of your short class handouts.

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Oral presentations with one-page handouts: 10% each.

Paper: 20% first draft plus 40% final draft

Quality (not quantity!) of discussion in class or via internet: 10%

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Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge UP, 2010)

Michael B. Hudson, ed., Middle East Dilemma: the Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (Columbia UP, 1999).

Marcus Noland and Howard Pack, The Arab Economies in a Changing World (Peterson Institute, 2007) - 978-0-88132-393-1

A. Richards and J. Waterbury, Political Economy of the Middle East , 3rd ed. (Westview, 2008)

 

Many other publications are available online for your research

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1st week (Aug. 25): Introduction

The challenges of economic globalization to the domestic economies of the MENA. Is globalization a "golden straitjacket" (Thomas Friedman, 13.6.97 lookup) expanding economies and shrinking political space? Despite the shrinking, there is still politics! Indeed, world politics, regional politics, local country politics, and that is what this course is about in this especially volatile region of the world. Our approach: globalization in the post Cold War context of US hegemony is the independent variable, and we wish to document and explain the region's varied responses. But the globalization and the US hegemony are being seriously challenged. The Doha round of negotiations drags on - really to conclude by the end of 2010? There are intervening regional variables, such as the Arab-Israeli peace process, the US occupation of Iraq, new alliances within the region, and special relationships with the United States, the European Community and other outside powers, that also impact upon the individual countries in the region. Another set of intervening variables are the institutions and social forces within each country which affect economic policy making. The MENA states have adapted a variety of responses to globalization--renewed statism and islamism as well as the Washington Consensus. Their policies, in turn, are contributing to new forms of capitalism and generating new social forces and backlashes. What are the prospects for political change - and in which general direction, toward greater democracy or increased repression?

Reading:
The theme of good governance for development, first raised by the World Bank in its World Development Report 1997 [online summary is FYI only, not required!], is again taken up in the World Development Report 2003 and in subsequent publications (see the index of online course materials, for this seminar), notably MENA Governance and New Notes, a periodical published since 2007.. Recently the World Bank has also focussed on the various conditions making for an investment-friendly environment. And it commissioned the Spence Report (you may follow Dani Rodrik's link to download it) to seek alternatives to the Washington Consensus recipe (still defended by Williamson up to a point) for economic development.

And speaking of the World Bank, you may look at excerpts of Prof. Joseph Stiglitz' Making Globalization Work after he resigned as its chief economist, disagreeing with many policies of the Bank and the IMF. He did not disagree, however, with the importance of good governance. Stiglitz' major contribution to economic theory, after all, lies in his analyses of the impacts of asymmetric information, a specialty of power hungry regimes as well as inside traders and other economic actors.

 

Improving goverance in the MENA is also a US priority since 9/11. Here is the leaked US "Sherpa guide" working paper in preparation for the June 2004 G-8 Summit , together with a collection of recent papers from the well meaning observers of reform at the Carnegie Endowment, as well as others available at the Arab Reform Initiative. I also keep here FYI an August 2006 report by Tamara Wittes (currently State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs) on the US Middle East Partnership and other initiatives to bring freedom to the region.

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Let us establish present base-lines of economic performance to document the proposition that the Middle East has, by its own and others' standards, been an economic "underperformer" for at least a generation. Both diachronic and synchronic data related to economic performance will be provided for MENA and comparable countries. Special attention will be given to "pre-revolutionary" patterns of development in selected MENA countries, as well as their respective transitions to patrimonial statist models of development. Data will be presented on both human and physical resource development, as well as on aggregate output and equality. We will examine the World Bank's World Development Indicators, (with some recent updates available online) comparing MENA countries with other regions. Look at various indicators of development: does MENA lag since the oil boom years (1973-83)? Freedom House announced the "Islamic world's democracy deficit" in December 2001 and offers a Map of Freedom that makes the MENA part of the world deep purple (along with China and a lapsed Russia)!

What special challenges do MENA countries face in the new post Cold War global order? What is "globalization" and how might current processes of political and economic change be compared with the changes in the latter half of the nineteenth century?

Readings:

Marcus Noland and Howard Pack, The Arab Economies in a Changing World, pp. 1-17, optional pp. 19-83

Arab Human Development Report 2004, pp. 1-22 and 47-64 , presents the "black hole state."

Ilya Harik, "Democracy, 'Arab exceptionalism,' and social science," The Middle East Journal 60.4 (Autumn 2006).

UNDP's Program on Arab Governance will offer you many resources on governance, arranged by country.

Richards and Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East, 3rd ed. (2008), pp. 1-43

World Economic Forum, Arab Competitiveness Report 2007 and 2009-10 - with country studies including Turkey. [here is complete 2009-10 report 492 pp. download]

 

 Optional: UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2002; Michael Field, Inside the Arab World (Harvard 1994) - has good background reading, especially good chapter on Saudi Arabia; also Roger Owen, State, Power, and Politics (Routledge, 2000); Ayubi, Nazih N., Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, London: I.B. Tauris, 1995. On globalization's special place in the Middle East, see Ellis Goldberg and Robert Vitalis, The Arabian Peninsula: Crucible of Globalization, paper presented to Second Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence, March 21-25, 2001. They try to distinguish between US hegemony, which is [was!] for real, and oldfashioned imperialism - what do you think?

Here is my take: The United States and Iraq: American Bull in a Middle East China Shop, in Betty Glad and Chris J. Dolan, eds., Striking First (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 65-73. Or a bit longer: The Clash of Globalizations in the Middle East, in Louise Fawcett, International Relations of the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 2005, 2008 update..

Additional suggestion: Kaufmann's article (3 megs download) cited by AHDR 2002, along with another more methodological one (also 3 megs) where he shows how to massage the data - so that you can evaluate some of the data behind his indices. And the introduction to a recent World Bank report Better governance for development in the MENA (141k). For a critique of the UNDP approach to good governance, among other things, see Galal Amin, The illusion of progress in the Arab world : a critique of Western misconstructions (AUC Press, 2006).

Suggested for a critical report: For an assessment of US democracy programs, see

* Tamara Wittes, Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy (Brookings 2008) - copies at PCL and LBJ

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It may seem odd to be comparing colonial situations in LA and the MENA but the post-1982 era of structural adjustment has raised new perceptions of dependency and imperialism in both regions. And each region has in fact been highly dependent on outside powers and interventions for economic development. The LA countries experienced a variety of post-"independence" nineteenth and twentieth influences - the British in Argentina etc. before the American Century (1945-2003 or so). And in the MENA many countries became nominally independent quite early - Egypt in 1922, Iraq in 1932 etc., and Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia were never formally colonized. Can Britain's "veiled" protectorate over Egypt 1882-1952 be usefully compared with USA control over various banana republics? I think we could try some interesting historical comparisons of the evolution of various forms of capitalism - British, French, etc. Populist breakthroughs -- Nasser and Peron or Vargas? What social forces emerged and how were they contained by the various military regimes in the regions… Nasser 1952-70 and the Peruvian military in 1970s? Chavez today vs rotten old bourgeois elites strikes a nice Middle Eastern ring, and the Venezuelan hero did meet Iranian President Ahmadinejad recently…and Saddam earlier.

Readings:

Henry and Springborg, chapter 1
Richards and Waterbury, chaps 4-6 (pp. 71-178) and recall pp 39-43.

Noland and Pack, pp. 187-207.

Moore, Clement Henry, Politics in North Africa, Boston: Little. Brown, 1970, chapter 2.

 

Suggested:

Bill, James A., and Springborg, Robert, Politics in the Middle East, 5th edition, Asddison Wesley, 2000.

Brown, L. Carl, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game, Princeton University Press, 1984

*El-Ghonemy, M. Riad, Affluence and Poverty in the Middle East, London: Routledge, 1998.

Hoogvelt, Ankie, Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

*Owen, Roger and Sevket Pamuk, (1998) A History of Middle East Economics in the Twentieth Century (London: Tauris)

*Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work, Penguin 2006.

_________, Globalization and its Discontents, Norton 2002: excerpts.

Williamson, John, ed., The Political Economy of Reform, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994

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Why has the MENA lagged? We look first at global factors. Oil rents and lavish aid (which can be carried further back to colonial times if Lisa Anderson is correct - the Europeans paid off their dependents to keep them quiet) fueled by the Cold War. Now the international rules have been changing since 1980s, leaving MENA adrift or in the throes of adjusment. MENA still gobbles up much of the world arms trade but appetites may be waning. US dual containment policy helps US arms exports but may be changing...

The world has cared too much and too little about the MENA - too much in that "the Eastern Question" amplified international rivalries (Carl Brown 1984 analysis, and now China's new oil drive); too little in that FDI shriveled after brief oil boom flirtations of mid-1970s, apart from the oil sector, which even so was partially disconnected from the major western companies in the 1970s.

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, chaps 7-8, intro ch 9, pp. 179-239, 228-232 (also see Looney review of 3rd ed in Middle East Policy pp. 163-167)

Henry and Springborg, chapter 2

For more on the Barcelona Process, relaunched in 2008 as the Union for the Mediterranean, but continuing as the EU Neighborhood for developing as well as policing it

@bels 2008- 1 - The Barcelona Development Agenda (Barcelona Forum, Sept. 2004 - not to be confused with the EU Barcelona Process started in Nov 1995))

World Bank, World Trade Indicators - take a look at the country briefs and various trade agreements

Noland and Pack, pp. 85-134

James Galbraith, University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) offers data to make your own files - here is the Maghreb plus all the data.

 

Braintwister:

@bels 2008 -10- Ronald Rogowski, "Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade," APSR 81:4 (Dec 1987), pp. 1121-1137

 Suggested:

*World Bank, 2008 MENA Economic Developments and Prospects : Regional Integration for Global Competitiveness (Washington DC 2008)

Shafik, Nemat, ed., Economic Challenges Facing Middle Eastern and North African Countries: Alternative Futures, New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

________, ed., Prospects for Middle Eastern and North African Economies: From Boom to Bust and Back?, New York: St. Martin's, 1998

Gereffi, Gary, and Korzeniewicz, Miguel, Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.

Goddard, C. Roe, Passe-Smith, John T., and Conklin, John G.. International Political Economy: State-Market Relations in the Changing Global Order. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996

Gray, John, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, New York: The New Press, 1998.

Henry, Clement M., The Mediterranean Debt Crescent: Money and Power in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey, University Press of Florida, 1996.

Maxfield, Sylvia, Gatekeepers of Growth: The International Political Economy of Central Banking in Developing Countries, Princeton University Press, 1997

Mittelman, James H., Globalization: Critical Reflections, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996.

Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? , Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997.

*Rogowski, Ronald, Commerce and coalitions : how trade affects domestic political alignments, Princeton University Press, 1989

Sachs, Jeffrey, and Warner, Andrew, "Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration," in Brainard, William C., and Perry, George L., Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, I, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995, 1-117.

 

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Introducing our bunker states, bullies, monarchies, and "democracies." Regimes condition the form and substance of economic decision-making, and capitalist legacies, whether Anglo-American, French, or German, may also matter if they survive the rapacious post-colonial regimes. Monarchies, themselves relics of the colonial era, seem to preserve their western forms of capitalism better than the more interventionist bunker or bully regimes of military officers. Each type of regime, however, enjoys a different set of constraints and opportunities in responding to the challenges of globalization. Here is my old (circa 1995 data) banking typology SPSS output, just reinvented to match the newer data.

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, ch 9, 11, pp. 239-263, 289-324.

Henry and Springborg, chapter 3.

The Evolution of Capitalism - an interesting little set of questions and typology discovered on a Washington, D.C. think tank website in 1999.

World Bank, Recovering from the Crisis: MENA Regional Update (April 2010); you may also find previous issues of MENA Economic Developments and Prospects in our online readings, including the most recent, From Privilege to Competition (Nov 2009)

Suggested:

Noland, Marcus (2008) "Explaining Middle Eastern Political Authoritarianism I: The Level of Democracy," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance: Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 1 followed by Article 2, same issue, "Explaining Middle Eastern Political Authoritarianism II: Liberalizing Transitions"

The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition, ch 5 of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, The Global Political Economy of Israel  - for a Marxian view of the regional political economy interacting with global capitalism.

Ayubi, Nazih N., Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, London: I.B. Tauris, 1995.

Suzanne Berger and Robert Dore, eds., National Diversity and Global Capitalism, Cornell University Press, 1996.

Haggard, Stephan, and Kaufman, Robert R., eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment, Princeton University Press, 1992

____________________, eds., The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions, Princeton University Press, 1995.

Haggard, Stephan, Lee, Chung H., and Maxfield, Sylvia, eds., The Politics of Finance in Developing Countries, Cornell University Press, 1993.

Leys, Colin, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Indiana University Press, 1996.

Linz, Juan J., and Steppan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, The Johns Hopkins Unievrsity Press, 1996.

*Loriaux, Michael, et al, Capital Ungoverned: Liberalizing Finance in Interventionist States, Cornell University Press, 1997.

*Maxfield, Sylvia, and Schneider, Ben Ross, eds., Business and the State in Developing Countries, Cornell University Press, 1997.

Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Cambridge University Press, 1991

Snider, Lewis, Growth, Debt, and Politics: Economic Adjustment and the Political Performance of Developing Countries, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996.

World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, Oxford University Press, 1997

*Zysman, John, Governments, Markets, and Growth, Cornell University Press, 1983

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The basic point about the oil rentiers in the predestination literature (treating mineral wealth like original sin) is that the state receives an uncertain flow of revenues, depending on international market prices, from an economic enclave which is pretty well disassociated from the rest of the economy. Less discussed are the various possible relationships between the state and the rest of the economy, notably its private sector. Some rentier states seem far more closely connected to them than others. Vast oil treasuries do not ensure a state's relative autonomy or "embedded" (Evans 1997) synergies with business communities. Kiren Chaudhry (1997) has demonstrated how difficult it was (and still is, despite gradual progress) for the Saudis to reduce subsidies to their supposedly dependent, state-created private sector. The (Najdi bureaucracy of the) Saudi state seemed organically connected with the (disproportionately Najdi) beneficiaries of its generous credit facilities.

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, ch 3, pp. 44-70

@bels 2008 11 - Michael L. Ross, "The Political Economy of the Resource Curse," World Politics 51:2 (Jan 1999), 297-322 (Abel's) and his latest thoughts Oil and Democracy Revisited (2009)

@bels 2008 12 - ________, "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics 53:3 (April 2001), pp. 325-361.

@bels 2008 6 - Michael Herb, "No Representation Without Taxation?" Comparative Politics, April 2005, pp. 297-316

 

 Data:

• Oil: look at British Petroleum 2008 Review of World Energy statistics on oil production, reserves, prices. For fuel as % exports from MENA states, see Henry and Springborg, Table 2-4. For some revised 2006 tables see Robert Springborg's pp. See also the World Bank's WDI data on oil revenues and taxes. Recall, too, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007, with its rankings placing Tunisia first among the resolurce-poor Arab countries.
• Arms data: From Mena-politics (http://www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/mena/) examine Center for Defense Information data base or go to Sipri (Sweden) at http://www.sipri.org/ and register to look for military expenditures by country or by region. Cf. WDI 2001data that you can update through the library online. You might also look at the Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/ and their databanks.

Suggested:

Hussein Mahdavi, "The Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: the Case of Iran," in M.Cook, ed., Studies in Economic History of the Middle East, Oxford, 1970.

*Kiren Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth, Cornell 1997

Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States, University of California Press, 1997

John Waterbury, "From Social Contracts to Extraction Contracts: The Political Economy of Authoritarianism and Democracy," in John P. Entelis, ed., Islam, Democracy and the State in North Africa, Indiana University Press, 1997 (Abel's).

Thad Dunning, Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2008)

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Islamic capitalism and the Washington Consensus

Does Islam act as a shield, mitigating dilemmas between international openness and social welfare? Algeria's reformers tried and failed in 1989-91 to maintain a tacit alliance with the FIS. But Iran may be on the way - eventually? - to combining the Washington Consensus with Islamist pluralism. Bonyads (foundations) as sources of civil society? Islamic business sectors will be examined in comparative perspective, including those of other conventional MENA economies, such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and the Gulf states. Islamic banking will be analyzed.

 

Reading:

Richards and Waterbury, pp. 362-384

Henry, Introduction to Special Issue on Islamic Banking, Thunderbird International Business Review, July 1999

Henry, Islamic finance: from medieval to contemporary globalization (2008 draft paper)

Henry and Wilson, The Politics of Islamic Finance, Introduction and Conclusion, also pp. 1-62, 104-154, plus any country of interest to you.

Noland and Pack, ch 5 Religion, Institutions, and Growth, pp. 137-155

 

Suggested:

*Timur Kuran, Islam and Mammon: the Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton, 2004)

*Ibrahim Warde, Islamic Finance in the Global Economy (Edinburgh, 2000), 2nd edition 2010

*Frank E. Vogel abd Samuel L. Hayes, III, Islamic Law and Finance: Religion, Risk, and Return (Kluer Law, 1998)

*Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, Islamic Finance: Law, Economics, and Practice (Cambridge UP, 2006)

Henry, Mediterranean Debt Crescent, pp. 123-132, 258-282

* S. Nazim Ali, ed., Islamic Finance: Current Legal and Regulatory Issues (Harvard Islamic Finance Project, 2005)

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8th week (Oct. 13): The Bunker Regimes: Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen

Statist legacies (weak but "fierce" states) which, to be fair, were not only reflections of state weakness but also responses to older forms of imperialism. Statism also fit the Bretton Woods era (1944-1971) of "embedded" (or social justice oriented) liberalism. Statist political forces surviving in the region: public sector officials, patronage networks, labor forces preventing dismantling of the old order. Bureaucratic overgrowth and issues of employment vs. privatization. Comparisons: peculiar convergence between the radical nationalizers and the oil producers. Affinities between bunker states and rentier economies? What is the distinction between a bunker regime and a bully regime of radical interventionist military officers? Social forces? Heterogeneity of the societies? Weakness of "civil society"?

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, pp. 252-263

Henry and Springborg, chapter 4

Ali El-Kenz, Algerian Reflections on Arab Dilemmas (UT Center for Middle East Studies, 1991), pages TBA (instructor's handout)

Clement M. Henry, "Algeria's Agonies: Oil Rent Effects in a Bunker State," Journal of North African Studies, 9:2 (summer 2004), pp. 68-81

Al-Mounsour (IMF), Capital Flight, RMEEF, Oct 2008

Clague, Keefer, Knack, and Olson, "Contract Intensive Money," IRIS Working Paper 151, U of Maryland, College Park, Oct. 1997

 Suggested:

Al-Kikhia, Mansour O., Libya's Qaddafi: the Politics of Contradiction, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997.

Batatu, Hanna, Syria's peasantry, the descendants of its lesser rural notables, and their politics, Princeton University Press, 1999

Carapico, Sheila, Civil Society in Yemen : the political economy of activism in modern Arabia, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

*Dillman, Bradford, State and Private Sector in Algeria: The Politics of Rent-Seeking and Failed Development, Boulder, CO:Westview, 2000.

El-Kenz, Ali, Algerian reflections on Arab crises, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1991.

Nashashibi, Karim, et al, Algeria: Stabilization and Transition to the Market, IMF Occasional paper 165, 1998.

*Perthes, Volker, The Political Economy of Syria under Asad, Tauris, 1997

Quandt, William B., Between ballots and bullets : Algeria's transition from authoritarianism, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998.

Vandewalle, Dirk, ed., North Africa: Development and Reform in a Changing Global Economy, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

*___________, Libya since 1969: Qadhafi's Revolution Revisited (Palgrave 2008)

*Waldner, David, State Building and Late Development, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999

Willis, Michael, The Islamist challenge in Algeria : a political history, Reading UK: Ithaca Press, 1996.

Zoubir, Yahia, ed., North Africa in Transition: State, Society, and Economic Transformation in the 1990s, University Press of Florida, 1999

*Yahia Zoubir and Haizam Fernandez eds., North Africa: Politics, Region and the Limits of Transformation, Routledge 2008

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Focus on the crony capitalist and other rent-seekers: the enclave business elites offer up resources to solidify the patronage networks. Why are the results different from those of equally corrupt polities in East Asia? How autonomous in these patrimonial regimes can economic policy makers be - look at the roles of technocrats, Waterbury's economic teams, zero in on Egypt and the final Gandzoury triumph after stagnation and paralysis under previous ministries (cf Suharto's sound macro-economic management after earlier mistakes). Maybe we can also find little change teams in Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan but they are precarious because technocrats just don't have relative autonomy in these patrimonial systems. Maybe more so in Egypt or Tunisia than in Algeria (where even presidents can be assassinated) or Iraq (where the poor petroleum minister had to flee in fall 1990 after being scapegoated for rising prices at the pump). Question: do bully regimes govern more effectively than bunkers? Look at the Kaufmann World Bank subjective indicators of governance. (best just to select all and paste them to an excel spreadsheet). And here is Human Rights in the Arab Region, Annual Report 2009, also some earlier comparative police state practice materials downloaded from an Arab human rights group (connected to IFEX) - "No Rules No Limits..." (retrieved 30 Sept 2006).

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, pp. 233-252, 325-361

Henry and Springborg, chapter 5

Galal Amin, Whatever happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, American University in Cairo Press, 2000

Henry, Tunisia's "Sweet Little" Regime, in Robert Rotberg, ed., Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations, Brookings Institution Press, 2007, pp. 300-323.

World Econcomic Forum, Egypt Country Profile and Tunisia

@bels 2008 9 - Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts (U of Calif Press, 2002), esp chapter 9 ("Dreamland") but as much as possible of the rest.

 

Suggested:

*Amin, Galal A., Egypt's economic predicament : a study in the interaction of external pressure, political folly, and social tension in Egypt, 1960-1990, New York : E.J. Brill, 1995.

*Ray Bush, Economic Crisis and the Politics of Reform in Egypt (Westview 1999)

Brand, Laurie A., Women, the state, and political liberalization : Middle Eastern and North African experiences, Columbia University Press, 1998.

Brown, Nathan J., The Rule of Law in the Arab World, Cambridge University Press, 1997

Nathan Brown, Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords (Uni of Calif Press, 2003)

*Markus Bouillon, The Peace Business: Money and Power in the Palestine-Israel Conflict (Tauris, 2004)

Hamidi, Muhammad al-Hashimi, The Politicisation of Islam : a case study of Tunisia, Boulder: Westview, 1998.

Handy, Howard, et. al., Egypt: Beyond Stabilization, Toward a Dynamic Market Economy, Washington: IMF (May 1998)

*Iliya Harik, Economic Policy of Reform in Egypt (UP of Florida, 1997)

Harik, Iliya, and Sullivan, Denis, eds., Privatization and Liberalization in the Middle East, Indiana University Press, 1992.

*Eberhart Kienle, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt (Tauris 2001)

*Stephen J. King, Liberalization Against Democracy: the Local Politics of Economic Reform in Tunisia (Uni of Indiana Press, 2003)

*Murphy, Emma C., Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Rocard, Michel, ed., Strengthening Palestinian Institutions, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999.

Sadowski, Yahia M., Political Vegetables? Buisnessman and Bureaucrat in the Development of Egyptian Agriculture, Washington, DC: Brookings Instittuions, 1991.

*Waterbury, John, Exposed to innumerable delusions : public enterprise and state power in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

I. W. Zartman, ed., Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991)

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Morocco, Jordan, and the Recalcitrant Arabian Peninsula: the GCC countries

All of the GCC countries are now back to previous 1979-80 levels of oil income. Whether rich or poor, they have stalled adjustment and rely on oil to keep themselves afloat. Have Morocco and Jordan, with fewer rents, made more "progress"? What do you make of the enclave development exemplified by Saudi Arabia's industrial cities - see the Saudi Arabia General Investment Authority (SAGIA) website. Or the financial pretensions of some of the smaller GCC states, such as Qatar and Bahrain, as indicated by the Arab bankers Association of North America, Abana Review, winter 2008 - not to mention Sovereign Wealth Funds (ibid., summer 2008)

Readings:

Denoeux, "The Politics of Morocco's 'Fight Against Corruption,'" Middle East Policy, February 2000 - with a Corruption Perceptions Index update to compare with World Bank Control of Corruption Index
Henry and Springborg, chapter 6

@bels 2008 -13 Melani Cammett, "Fat Cats and Self-Made Men: Globalization and the Paradoxes of Collective Action," Comparative Politics, 37:4 (July 2005), 379-400.

Arts and Nonneman, pp. 85-143 (Malik & Niblock, Hertog chapters) - also see Saudi budget 2008 analysis - along with SAMBA's golden economy prospects as of summer 2007- also excerpts about Saudi population and employment problems from Anthony Cordesman, Saudi Arabia Enters the Twenty-first Century.

Suggested:

** Stefan Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and State in Saudi Arabia, New York, Columbia University Press, 2010

*Melani Cammett, Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge UP, 2007)

* Paul Aarts & Gerd Nonneman, eds., Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (London: Hurst 2005)

Timothy Walters et al, "Miracle or Mirage: Is Development Sustainable in the UAE?" MERIA 10:3 (Sept 2006),

Gregory White, A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco: On the Outside of Europe Looking In, Albany: SUNY 2001

Tim Niblock, Saudi Arabia: Power, Legitimacy and Survival (Routledge, 2006)

**____ with Monica Malik, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia (Routledge, 2007) - PCL electronic edition available

Aburish, Saïd K., The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, London, Bloomsbury, 1995.

*Chaudhry, Kiren Aziz, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East, Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1997.

Crystal, Jill, Oil and politics in the Gulf : rulers and merchants in Kuwait and Qatar, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Fandy, Mamoun, (1999) Saudi Arabia and the politics of dissent (NY: St. Martin's)

Gause, F. Gregory III, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Seccurity Challenges in the Arab Gulf States, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993.

Hammoudi, Abdellah, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism, University of Chicago Press, 1997

Kostiner, Joseph, ed., Middle East Monarchies: the Challenge of Modernity, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.

*Piro, Timothy J., The Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan, London; Rowman and Littlefield, 1998

John Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful; the Moroccan political elite - a study in segmented politics, Columbia University Press, 1970.

  

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(Nov. 3): no class

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11th week (Nov. 10): Relationships between political and economic development - dilemmas of transparency, "investment-friendly" environments?

Is the MENA a political backwater (maybe explaining the poor quality of economic policy-making?) because of its authoritarian regimes? To carry the golden straightjacket analogy a step further, is the MENA already especially undemocratic for its levels of economic development and social change? Data will show that much of the region is just reaching critical per capita GDP levels but of course these mean little unless we can get some theoretical explanations behind the supposed correlations between per capita income and type of political regime. How will globalization affect the region's archaic patrimonial regimes? Maybe, though economic development did not necessarily undermine dictatorship in the past (cf Przeworski), globalization seen in its political and imperial as well as economic ramifications puts ever increasing pressure on incumbent patrimonial regimes. Countries can go democratic for geopolitical as well as for modernization reasons. Does the Information Revolution present a new set of threats and opportunities? Here we compare the achievements of the more promising authoritarian systems, such as Tunisia, with the "democracies" of Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey (each of which is not quite democratic in convnetional meansings of the temr, but a bit more so than the others). Some Internet filtering responses are studied by Open Net Iniative. The US private takes the lead with Platinum Inc., Taming the Internet in Syria (2006?) - and here is some commentary on 'A turning point for Internet freedom in Morocco' (posted Sept 12, 2008). Jillian York, "ONI Releases 2009 Middle East & North Africa Research," Aug 19, 2009, OpenNet Initiative Website

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, pp. 228-263, 325-343

Henry and Springborg, chapter 7 and a quick update on Turkey
@bels 2008 7 - Steven Heydemann, ed., Networks of Privilege, Introduction

@bels 2008 5 - Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy 13:1 (Jan. 2002), pp. 5-21 - and response by G O'Donnell, Journal of Democracy 13:3 (July 2002), pp. 6-12.

@bels 2008 3 - Eva Bellin, The Political-Economic Conundrum, Carnegie Paper No. 53 (Nov 2004)

Open Net Initiative, Internet in the MENA 2008-2009 and country reports

Human Rights Watch, The Internet in the Middle East and North Africa, June 1999; False Freedom, Nov. 2005. Some updates by Jon Anderson and Naomi Sakr from Georgetown University's NMIT, which has plenty of other resources, including an interesting three-pager on Al-Jazeera.

@bels 2008 4 - Carnegie Enowment for International Peace, Arab Reform Bulletin, Dec 2004, Special Issue on Arab media, including statistics (pdf entire issue) in Abel's Course Pack

Henry, Transparency and Accountability in the Arab Region: A Political Economy Perspective, paper prepared for UNDP/OECD Initiative on Good Governance for Development (GfD) in the Arab Countries, Dead Sea, Jordan, Feb 6-7, 2005

Financial Reform: Varieties of Capitalism?

There is a growing literature arguing for a diversity of capitalisms rather than one Anglo-Saxon size-fits-all. In the financial sector - the commercial banking systems that predominantly allocate the credit - we may be able to discern the different Anglo-American (competitive, predominantly private sector banking), Franco-Japanese statist (concentrated and publicly owned banks), and German (concentrated, private) systems and see how they display different constraints and hesitations. Is "Islamic" capitalism congruent with the Anglo-American model?

Here is some quick and dirty analysis of sharia boards, building on the analysis of sharia arbitrage discussed by Mahmoud El-Gamal in Nazim Ali, ed, Islamic Finance: Current Legal and Regulatory issues (Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard, 2005). The analysis can be extending by doing a sear ch analysis of the 268 companies' boards assembled here from the IFIS download. Anyone care to continue my work and give it a try?

Readings:

@bels 2008 2 - Eva Bellin, "Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor and Democratization in Late-Developing Countries," World Politics, 52 (January 2000), 175-205

@bels 2008 8 - Giacomo Luciani, From Private Sector to National Bourgeoisie: Saudi Arabian Business, in Paul Aarts & Gerd Nonneman, eds., Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (London: Hurst 2005), pp. 144-181.

World Bank, Global Development Finance 2006, Overview and Policy Messages. Here is 2008 update and the complete report (4 megs). Here is 2009 update Charting a global recovery, with regional outlooks, MENA pp. 126-132

Henry, Islamic Finance: Global Identity Problems and Prospects (2006) with updated market shares data (Appendix Table 1)

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What implications might the Arab Free Trade Area Agreement of 1997 and various other multilateral and bilateral trade agreements have for the economic development of the region? [need to update Euro-Med Partnership and various US trade initiatives] May greater regional integration accelerate economic growth? May transnational business groups further regional integration?

Readings:

Richards and Waterbury, ch 15, pp. 385-406

Noland and Pack, pp. 209-236

Michael Hudson ed., Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration, Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 1-32, 217-319 plus a chapter on a specific region.

World Bank, 2008 MENA Economic Developments and Prospects : Regional Integration for Global Competitiveness, esp. chapter 2

______, Is There a New Vision for Maghreb Economic Integration? (November 2006)

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Transregional economic alliances and business groups deserve some discussion, especially Israel and its neighbors but also the Islamic multinationals.

More economic accountability can just as well help to rationalize authoritarian practices. Develop some of the arguments connecting economic to political development discussed in earlier weeks. Conclude that rationalized authoritarianism may be consequence, intended or unintended, of the globalization hegamon. Or the United States can take Democratic Pluralism Initiatives more seriously, develop those vital capitalist communications, and not be afraid of the spillover into civic domains. This may require accepting the findings in week 12.

Here is a dilemma of US private sector: Google's Gatekeepers, NYT Magazine, Nov 30, 2008, but N. Kristof, Google Takes a Stand, op ed. NY Times, Jan 14, 2010...

Readings: each other's papers and

Richards and Waterbury, ch 10, 16, pp. 264-288, 407-413

Henry and Springborg, chapter 8

Noland and Pack, pp. 299-314

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