Elias H. Tuma - Economic and Political Change in the Middle East (RLE Economy of Middle East)

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
THE ECONOMY OF THE MIDDLEEAST

Volume 9

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHANGE
IN THE MIDDLE EAST

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

ELIAS H. TUMA

First published in 1987

This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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1987 Elias H. Tuma

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ISBN: 978-1-138-78710-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74408-7 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-81312-0 (Volume 9)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74526-8 (Volume 9)

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ECONOMIC
AND
POLITICAL
CHANGE
IN THE
MIDDLE EAST

ELIAS H. TUMA

Pacific Books, Publishers
Palo Alto, California

Copyright 1987 by Elias H. Tuma.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Tuma, Elias H.
Economic and political change in the Middle East.

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Near EastEconomic conditions. 2. Arab countries
Economic conditions. 3. Near EastPolitics and
government1945 . 4. Arab countriesPolitics and
government1945 . I. Title.
HC415.15.T86 1986 338.956 86-8120
ISBN 0-87015-253-X

PACIFIC BOOKS, PUBLISHERS
P.O. Box 558, Palo Alto, California 94302-0558, U.S.A.

It has been almost five years since I embarked on this study. The challenges, frustrations, and gratifications still abound. The economic and political development questions have hardly changed, and though the methods and policies have changed a little, the change has not always been in the right direction. Therefore, the results have often been quite different from those predicted. That is how the researcher remains challenged.

This study is in many ways a team effort. Colleagues, who have chosen to remain annonymous, have helped by giving friendly, sometimes severe, but always constructive comments. Typing different versions of the manuscript has been the contribution of various people including Marilyn Won, Nadia Hanna, Martha Dennis Tuma, Kathy Fisk, Dean MacKinnon, and Petrina Ho; Ruth Fowler has helped with editing; I am grateful to all of them. Special thanks go to Romayne Ponleithner for the marvelous job of copyediting the manuscript.

I am also grateful to the University of California, Davis, and the American University in Cairo for the research grants they awarded me in support of this study. The greatest debt, however, I owe to the students who took my course on the economy of the Middle East at the American University in Cairo and the University of California, Davis. They were gentle but penetrating critics and a major source of the challenge and encouragement for me to go on with the study. I hope they have benefited from our intellectual interaction as much as I did, for which I offer them my sincere thanks. However, as usual, I take responsibility for any errors of omission or commission remaining.

Davis, California
May 31, 1985

ELIAS H. TUMA

FIGURE

TABLE

The literature on the Middle East has mushroomed in the last two decades in the form of books, journal articles, bulletins, and data compilations and statistical tables, and no doubt more is on the way.

Most of the new studies have tended to glorify the achievements of the Middle Eastern countries in economic development and industrialization. This study is different. It is motivated by skepticism and a sense of intellectual frustration and apprehension because of the apparent inadequacy of socioeconomic and political development in the region in recent decades. It is my impression that the problems and issues of underdevelopment and backwardness that plagued the Middle East two or three decades ago are still there today and are not about to go away. Because the policies designed to deal with them have mainly reflected the cold war and the interests of the political leaders of the individual countries, or were responses to immediate events and crises, they have had little to do with the chronic problems they were supposed to treat. These approaches have rarely reflected the basic interests of the people of the Middle East, their long-term goals and objectives, or the sacrifices they have been forced to make for the sake of economic and social development. Thus, it appears that the policies have been aimed at the wrong targets or they have been intended to serve the wrong objectives.

In the early 1960s the Middle East suffered from political instability, inefficiency of government, widespread poverty and inequality, low productivity, and a mounting population pressure on the regions resources. With the exception of some of the oil-exporting countries, the entire region still suffers from these same burdens. There are one or more wars going on all the time; the number of refugees is still on the increase; and the population pressure continues to rise, but few leaders in the Middle East consider that pressure a challenge or a threat to their policies.

It is not that efforts have not been expended to cope with the problems. On the contrary, many efforts by the Middle Eastern governments and by their clients and allies from abroad have been directed toward a solution. The difficulty lies in the nature of the problems they face and in the methods used to solve those problems.

The Middle East is full of contrasts, from the most fertile land to the arid deserts that occupy large sections of it. Here one finds medieval life as well as twentieth-century living. While the region is large in area, it is relatively poor in agricultural land and other resources, with the exception of oil, which is highly concentrated in a few countries. The agricultural land has been declining in relative and absolute terms, owing both to the population growth and to urban encroachment. Yet most people still live in rural areas and a large plurality, if not a majority, of them depend on agriculture for a living. The region has invested heavily in industry and has realized some growth in manufacturing, but it is far from becoming an industrial region. The per capita income in the region is still on the low side relative to that of other regions, except for a few of the rich oil-exporting countries in which the per capita income has skyrocketed; these observations will be dealt with in detail below.