Book Launch: Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa

Dr Robert Springborg

Book a place

Abstract

This book focuses on national and regional politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to explain why economies there are underperforming. Variations in performance are traced to historically rooted capacities of states. Those countries whose pedigrees as virtual nation states extend over centuries or millennia today have more capable states than those with shallower, indigenous historical roots. But virtually all MENA states are relatively weak as compared for example to East Asian developmental states. Incapable of establishing mutually beneficial interactions with the typically heterogeneous societies over which they rule, MENA states resort to repression or patronage as the default means of ruling. Neither method is  compatible with citizenship, “public brainpower,” or sustainable economic development.

Why these overgrown, weak states have been unable to escape generally unfavourable historical legacies is explained with reference to what neo-institutional economists have labeled “limited access orders” and the deep states that underpin them. Those deep states, which control the means of coercion, have undermined nominal, visible governmental institutions upon which effective governance depends. Increasingly being challenged by their populations, these states face the daunting and so far unmet challenge of urgently diversifying non-sustainable, rentier political economies away from direct or indirect dependence on oil and gas revenues. The MENA regional economy imposes another constraint on growth as it, largely for political reasons, remains structurally fragmented. With a very rapid rate of population growth, the MENA is facing an economic crisis that can only be overcome by fundamental political change.

Biography

Robert Springborg is a non-resident Research Fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, Rome, and Adjunct Professor, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. Formerly he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, and Program Manager for the Middle East for the Center for Civil-Military Relations;  the holder of the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he also served as Director of the London Middle East Institute; the Director of the American Research Center in Egypt; University Professor of Middle East Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia; and assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the College of Europe, Warsaw; the Paris School of International Affairs of Sciences Po; and the University of Sydney. In 2016 he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, Middle East Initiative, Kennedy School, Harvard University. His most recent books are Egypt (2018) and Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa (2020), both published by Polity Press.

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. Online Registration

Chair: Dina Matar (SOAS)

Organiser: SOAS Middle East Institute

Contact email: lmei@soas.ac.uk