Bureaucracy And Development In The Arab World

This book, first published in 1986, examines the literature on administration, human resources and development in the Arab world. It emphasizes contemporary societies and their internal dynamics, the least known and most critical aspects of Arabic studies.

Successful development in the Middle East remains elusive, although considerable aid is poured into the region and extensive bureaucracies for managing development have been established. This book is a concise political economy of Middle Eastern development and its administration. A major focus is the nature and role of State and bureaucracy. Special attention is also paid to the relation between aid and development. In addition to providing an analytical framework, this book brings together a wealth of up-to-date information in an easily accessible format about the region's economic development and the structure of the countries' development 'machinery'. Extensive original research in the area, combined with a balanced use of Western and Arabic sources allow the author to present the most comprehensive overview of the subject available yet. The book encompasses most of the Arab countries plus Ethiopia. The Arab donors are also examined in detail. Especially valuable and not elsewhere available are the numerous organisational charts depicting the individual countries' development administrations and the Arab donors' aid administrations. This book will be of interest to all students of Middle East politics, economics and administration as well as to students of development.

A critique of the institutional systems and practices that define, and in many cases limit, the administrative state in the Arab world, this study centres on the factors contributing to the failure of development efforts. This book looks at the way context and culture affect state capacity.

A particularly trenchant political economy of the Arab world, set within the dual contexts of the historical development of the Middle East and the evolving world economic system. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book, first published in 1987 and by one of Saudi Arabia’s most distinguished academics, reviews the experience of the Arab oil producers in social, economic and political development in the key period of the Seventies and Eighties. It is broadly pessimistic about the prospects for future development and sceptical about past achievements. It argues that the ‘petro-bureaucracy’ in the Arabian Peninsula has failed to establish the basic principles of effective development because it has been mesmerised by the vast oil revenues it has attempted to administer. The book suggests that in many respects the oil revenues have obstructed serious development because they have made the Arabian economies totally dependent on one expendable resource and this has made them too vulnerable to external pressures and interests. Furthermore, the oil revenues have encouraged fantasy and wishful thinking which have skewed the development process and stimulated pseudo-development. The book makes clear that until the petro-bureaucracy adopts a realistic approach to development there can be no prospect of real development in the Arabian Peninsula.