Led by Dr Steffen Hertog, Department of Government, LSE
Dr Hertog's LSE webpage
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has in the past served as inspiration for political economy theories that have proven significant for the developing world at large, notably modernization theory and theories of rentier states and the “resource curse”. Western strategic interest in the Middle East remains as high as ever thanks to its energy riches and the global implications of its regional conflicts. The political economy challenges the MENA region faces have, if anything, become more acute in the wake of the Arab uprisings.
Yet in recent decades there has been limited comparative political economy (CPE) research on the region and no major political science theories have emerged from it. While political scientists, development specialists and economists have done considerable work on Middle Eastern data and country cases, much of it is ideographic in focus. Comparative work is typically limited to intra-regional comparisons and tends to draw on general theories rather than contributing to them.
This programme will act as a facilitator to re-energize comparative political economy research on the MENA region. While tackling some of the large political economy issues that are MENA-specific, its primary aim will be to put the region into wider comparative context in the developing world. It aims not only to test the applicability of wider political economy concepts in MENA, but also aims to draw on regional cases to generate theoretical innovation in comparative political economy.
The programme will be research-driven, and its primary role will be to provide infrastructure for serious academic output on MENA CPE issues. It will draw on available academic expertise on MENA and other world regions at the LSE as well as other London institutions.
The programme’s core activity will be research workshops. As currently envisaged, a key, multiyear project will be an analytical comparison of resource-rich countries in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa. Other research themes envisaged include:
• Is there a Gulf or Middle Eastern “Variety of Capitalism”?
• The political economy of labour markets and migration in the Gulf
• The political economy of public enterprise in MENA in comparative perspective
• MENA social security and subsidy regimes after the Arab uprisings
• The political economy of “jihadist” political violence
In addition to convening workshops with leading academics from around the world (including the MENA region itself), the programme will convene occasional short seminars in which LSE and other academics will present research in progress. It will also make small grants available on a competitive basis to cover research expenses for projects related to the above research workshops and themes.
The main output of the programme will be high-quality academic publications. Workshop participants will be asked to produce short summary papers that will be combined into workshop reports. They will also be strongly encouraged to produce working papers that will be published on the programme’s website. The programme will not hold copyright over these papers and will encourage subsequent publication in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr Ferdinand Eibl
Research Officer
Rodrigo Torres
Research Assistant
Anita King
Research Assistant
Charlotte Jordan
Research Assistant
Dr Jonas Fossli Gjersø
Research Assistant
Workshop 1: 'Oil is what you make of it? Rents and public goods provision in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa'
In October 2015, the project convened the first research workshop for its flagship project about public goods provision and human development outcomes in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa resource rich states. The workshop addressed the puzzle why resource-rich states in MENA score markedly better than resource-rich states in sub-Saharan Africa on government effectiveness and human development, both in direct comparison and in terms of the respective differences to non-rentiers in both regions (see below figures – for a detailed concept note on this puzzle, see here).
The workshop, organized by the program leaders Ferdinand Eibl and Steffen Hertog, brought together leading international experts on resource curse issues and on the political economy of both regions, including Michael Herb (Georgia State), Farrukh Iqbal (World Bank), Adeel Malik (Oxford), Jesse Ovadia (Newcastle), John Heilbrunn (Colorado School of Mines), Douglas Yates (American University of Paris), Robert Parks (CEMA, Algeria), Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Oxford), as well as numerous discussants from various departments at the LSE. Papers and presentations discussed in the workshop included country case studies, large-n analyses of the impact of rents and human development outcomes, as well as conceptual work about the causality of the resource curse.
By looking at sets of cases that systematically defy our expectations of the resource curse, the workshop has provided a new perspective on resource rents and development. Various authors will investigate specific structural and historical hypotheses for the heterogeneous impact of rents across different regions in follow-up work. The first two working papers emerging from the workshop have been revised, are close to publication, and will soon be circulated.
Workshop 2: ‘The political economy of labour markets and migration in the Gulf’
In March 2016 the project held its second workshop in Kuwait on the topic of ‘The political economy of labour markets and migration in the Gulf’, attended by leading economists and policy-makers from the region. This included Dr Yousef Al-Ebraheem (Amiri Diwan), Manaf Alhajeri (Markaz), Dr Omar Alnuaimi (UAE Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratization), Yaw Nyarko (New York University), Suresh Naidu (Columbia University) and Khaled Mahdi (Supreme Council for Planning and Development).
With job creation for nationals in the private sector critical for the GCC’s socio-economic stability, the participants discussed data-sharing and cooperative research projects on a number of topics including supply and demand for Kuwaitis in the private sector and initiatives to plug the gap, triangulating the labour market in Saudi Arabia: surveying firms, nationals and expats and uncovering network processes in the study of labour migration.
Read the workshop report
Workshop presentations:
-Jeff Yousef: ‘Private sector nationalisation: labour supply & demand’
-Robert Holzmann: 'Triangulating the Saudi labor market: surveying firms, nationals and expats’
-Suresh Naidu, Yaw Nyarko, and Shing-Yi Wang: ‘Worker mobility in a global labor market: evidence from the UAE’
-Thomas Joseph, Yaw Nyarko, Shing-Yi Wang: ‘Asymmetric Information and remittances: evidence from matched administrative data’
-Steffen Hertog: ‘GCC labor and migration policy: some evidence and many questions’
Workshop 3: ‘Varieties of rentierism’
In September 2016, the project convened its third research workshop at LSE ‘Varieties of rentierism’.