Neoliberalism in the Middle East and North Africa
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During the post-war period, many leaders of the MENA region enacted an economic growth model based on import substitution industrialization, in which the state intervened heavily in the public and private sectors to enhance economic growth.[1] The quality of the reforms was largely dependent on the quality of the political regimes in place. By the 1970s, corruption and rigidities in the public sector, as well as global economic developments, had halted economic growth.[2] In the 1980s, MENA countries began to adopt neoliberal Structural Adjustment Packages (SAP), which advocated for open markets and the removal of trade barriers.[3] Market deregulations, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), and opening the region up to the world market facilitated enormous economic and social transformations that defined MENA’s last four decades.[4] While neoliberalist policies succeeded in generating significant economic growth, they left much of MENA’s population unemployed.[3] This sparked repeated social unrest, which, in turn, was counteracted by the rise of authoritarian dictators that were supported by the IMF and World Bank.[5][6] As such, neoliberalism’s effects on MENA continue to be a widely disputed and controversial subject that has undoubtedly left a large mark on the region.
Beginning in the late 1960s, several neoliberal reforms were implemented in the Middle East.[7][8] For instance, Egypt is frequently linked to the implementation of neoliberal policies, particularly the 'open-door' policies of President Anwar Sadat throughout the 1970s[9] and Hosni Mubarak's successive economic reforms between 1981 and 2011.[10] These measures, known as al-Infitah, were later diffused across the region. In Tunisia, neoliberal economic policies are associated with the former president and de facto dictator[11] Zine El Abidine Ben Ali;[12] his reign made it clear that economic neoliberalism can coexist and even be encouraged by authoritarian states.[5] Responses to globalization and economic reforms in the Gulf have also been approached via a neoliberal analytical framework.[13]