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Towards a New Political Economy of State Industrialization in the Arab Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Michel Chatelus  and
Yves Schemeil
Michel Chatelus
Affiliation:
Institut D'etudes Politiques de Grenoble, France
Yves Schemeil
Affiliation:
Institut D'etudes Politiques de Grenoble, France
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Extract

Over recent years, scholars and politicians have grown to recognize the increasing obsolescence of models and patterns applicable to the development crisis. This crisis affects both ‘liberal’ capitalist systems and state-controlled ‘socialist’ systems, and can be analyzed on two levels. On the theoretical level, the development crisis is one aspect of the crisis of paradigms in social sciences, especially in economics. New ways of thinking originate with the denial of all those dogmatic approaches which have flourished in the realm of economic development for the last three decades. However, we cannot be satisfied with a predominantly empirical investigation devoid of theoretically explicit background. On the empirical level, some sweeping situations emerge; development processes, either unpredicted by, or contradictory to theoretical forecasts have arisen.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , May 1984 , pp. 251 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

NOTES

Authors' note: We are grateful to the anonymous editor whose observations contributed to improve a paper delivered to the Philadelphia MESA meeting in November 1981; here published with minor changes.Google Scholar

1 ‘Political’ and ‘economic’ theories are both under criticism today. Political theories, in challenging ‘Development economics’ deprive it of its main asset, the coherence of a simplifying model. ‘Development politics’ does not provide better answers since voluntarism does not lead to noticeable results and liberalism is not a solution. See, for instance, the remarks of a political scientist fascinated by economic constraints: Lindblom, , “The Market as a Prison,” Journal of Politics (05 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For instance, Morgan, David, “Fiscal Policy in Oil Developing Countries,” Staff Papers (03 1979).Google Scholar

3 United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia (E.C.W.A.), Survey of Economic and Social Developments in ECWA Region, 1980 and 1981.Google Scholar

4 World Bank, World Development Report, 1978 to 1982.Google Scholar

5 E.C.W.A., Survey, statistical appendix, various international and national sources.Google Scholar

6 E.C.W.A., Survey, p. 57.Google Scholar

7 This is a broader and more general concept than that proposed by Krueger, Ann, “The Rent-seeking Society,” American Economic Review (06 1974).Google Scholar She describes India as a rent-seeking society where it is more important for businessmen to compete for state-allotted privileges than to be efficent producers.

8 Balance of resources, i.e., the difference between a country's “uses” (private and public consumption and investment) and its “resources” (Gross Domestic Product as different from G.N.P.).Google Scholar

9 World Bank, World Development Report, 1981.Google Scholar

10 Moreover, local firms benefit from preferential governmental contracts, equivalent to subsidies, which do not encourage efficiency and productivity.Google Scholar

11 For further elaboration, see Schemeil, Y., “Une nouvelle stratégie de coalition? L'exemple du cartel pétrolier,” Revue Française de Science Politique (Avril 1980);Google Scholar“Du cadi au caddie: attitudes envers la modernisation dans les pays arabes du Golfe,” in Bonnenfant, P., La péninsule arabique aujourd'hui (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1982), Tome 1, pp. 245–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 On that point, cf. Oppenheim, P., Ancient Mesopotamia, Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964);Google ScholarSauvaget, J., Alep (Paris: Gauthner, 1941);Google ScholarBujra, A., The Politics of Stratification, A Study of Political Change in a South Arabian Town (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970).Google Scholar

13 On this point, see Ibrahim, M., “Social and Economic Conditions in pre-Islamic Mecca,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 14, 3 (1980), pp. 343–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See in particular Ibrahim, M., The Social and Economic Background of the Umayyad Caliphate, University of California at Los Angeles, Ph.D. Thesis, 1981.Google Scholar

15 Whether this is a typical feature of the Middle East or not is still open to question. Here is not the place to discuss at length the historical specificities of the area. Nonetheless, Peter von Sivers' general comment during the Philadelphia panel (MESA meeting, November 1981)—while stressing the difficulty of defining production without being too rigorous in a region which lacked and still lacks the average population density required to foster technology—admitted that the pre-industrial past still functions in the present. We take this opportunity to thank von Sivers for his stimulating comments.Google Scholar

16 Khader, A., Development Planning in Jordan 1952–1970, American University of Beirut, M.A. Thesis, 1970;Google ScholarMazur, M., Economic Growth and Development in Jordan (London: Croom Helm, 1979).Google Scholar

17 Hannoyer, J., Seurat, M., Etat et secteur public industriel en Syrie (Beyrouth: CERMOC, 1979), p. 93.Google Scholar

18 Page 784 og. in the ‘civic gospel’ of Birmingham under Chamberlain; see Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth: 1968), pp. 185–240.Google Scholar

19 Financial Times, April 1979.Google Scholar