The comparative political economy of the MENA region

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.

 

Oil is what you make of it? Rents and public goods provision in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa

In October 2015, the MENA comparative political economy programme 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.