Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited

This volume explores the role of informal networks in the politics of Middle Eastern economic reform. The editor's introduction demonstrates how network-based models overcome limitations in existing approaches to the politics of economic reform. The following chapters show how business-state networks in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan have affected privatization programs and the reform of fiscal policies. They help us understand patterns and variation in the organization and outcome of economic reform programs, including the opportunities that economic reforms offered for reorganizing networks of economic privilege across the Middle East.

'This volume fills a major gap in the scholarly and policy literature on globalization and economic reform by inserting the Middle East squarely into contemporary debates about the political economy of development. Drawing on economic sociology's new network analysis, the contributions in this collection provide unusually subtle interpretations of the laggard patterns of economic reform and privatization in the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-first century. At long last, students of comparative political economy will find here instructive and accessible Middle Eastern cases - including the 'success stories' of the Arab world - while students of the Middle East will encounter social science deployed to generate plausible and provocative hypotheses about the nature of power and wealth in the region. This is a welcome contribution to debate about the impetus and impediments to reform in the Middle East.' - Lisa Anderson, Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, USA

'Economic reform threatens existing economic elites, but also offers them opportunities to shape reform in their interests. This volume explores the process of reform in the Arab world, examining the role of informal networks of blood, marriage, patronage, common schooling in shaping the response of privileged groups to reform. The individual contributions offer important insights into the process of economic reform in individual countries in the Arab world, and together the contributions help to illuminate the crucial role of informal networks in economic reform in the region. The volume helps us to better understand the nexus between politics, informal ties, and economic outcomes in the Arab world.' - Michael Herb, Georgia State University, USA

STEVEN HEYDEMANN is Director, Centre for Democracy and the Third Sector, Georgetown University, USA.