Privatization And Liberalization In The Middle East

... a highly original and valuable contribution on an important and most timely topic... No other book on Middle Eastern political economy matches this one in combining clarity of focus and breadth of geographic coverage. - Robert Bianchi. An international group of specialists take stock of the problems and prospects for privatization of state-run economies and other liberalization efforts in a wide range of countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Although privatization and liberalization are frequently regarded as economic measures, the contributors demonstrate that it is the politics of such reforms that often determines the success or failure of economic policy changes. The countries under review share a variety of economic and political characteristics, yet are sufficiently different in their response to the call for privatization to constitute useful cases for comparative political and economic analysis. Countries studied include Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Algeria. The contributors are Abdel-Monem Said Aly, Laurie A. Brand, Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, Iliya Harik, Fred H. Lawson, Marcie J. J. Sullivan, and Dirk Vandewalle.

The fourth in a series on the Middle East, this volume deals with liberalisation. It argues that few countries have been untouched by economic and/or political liberalisation, particularly the Middle East. It looks at Turkey, Egypt and Iraq along with other Middle Eastern states.

Analysing developments in the Middle East, this book concludes that economic liberalization has failed to entail the continuous growth and widespread welfare gains expected by its proponents. Privatization and crony capitalism do not allow individuals to participate in the formation of decent social norms.

Although most Arab countries remain authoritarian, many have undergone a restructuring of state-society relations in which lower- and middle-class interest groups have lost ground while big business has benefited in terms of its integration into policy-making and the opening of economic sectors that used to be state-dominated. Arab businesses have also started taking on aspects of public service provision in health, media and education that used to be the domain of the state; they have also become increasingly active in philanthropy. The ‘Arab Spring,’ which is likely to lead to a more pluralistic political order, makes it all the more important to understand business interests in the Middle East, a segment of society that on the one hand has often been close to the ancien regime, but on the other will play a pivotal role in a future social contract. Among the topics addressed by the authors are the role of business in recent regime change; the political outlook of businessmen; the consequences of economic liberalisation on the composition of business elites in the Middle East; the role of the private sector in orienting government policies; lobbying of government by business interests and the mechanisms by which governments seek to keep businesses dependent on them.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: 1,7, University of Kassel, 27 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: It is claimed that Middle Eastern countries lack behind market reforms and show an antipathy towards neoliberal economic restructuring. This research paper looks into the logic of economic restructuring, whereby privatisation, competition and regulation theory build the framework for analysing market liberalisation in the Middle East. A case study on Islamic banking reflects the differences and challenges of respecting Muslim traditions at the one hand and Western financial practices on the other. It becomes paramount that economic restructuring is perceived mostly negatively by Muslim states and therefore, clashes with neoliberal understanding of pro-market reforms are inevitable.

Worldwide privatization has expanded rapidly but in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region progress has been markedly slow. The two main obstacles to privatization in the MENA region are seen to be the high level of overstaffing in public enterprises and the inability of economies to create jobs fast enough. This volume is divided into two parts. The first addresses key issues of an institutional and political economy nature to explain pressures for and against state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform and privatization. The second part of the book presents empirical studies of Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and Turkey to illustrate the specific roles played by the state and by interest groups in the pace of SOE reform, as well as to analyze the negative impact on productivity and financial performance on an inflated public sector. The conclusions drawn from these studies are that social protection and effective labor redundancy policies should be addressed prior to privatization, and that there is a prerequisite for increased private sector investment in SOEs to accelerate MENA's integration with the world economy via trade-related programs and infrastructure.