Kuwait-Elections-800-600 — Kuwait Stock Exchange, Jack Dabaghian, Kuwait Ministry of Information / flickr.com (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The MENA region has in the past served as inspiration for political economy theories that have proven significant for the developing world at large, notably modernisation theory and theories of rentier states and the 'resource curse'. Western strategic interest in the Middle East remains as high as ever thanks to its energy riches and the global implications of its regional conflicts. The political economy challenges the MENA region faces have, if anything, become more acute in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

Yet, in recent decades, there has been limited comparative political economy (CPE) research on the region and no major political science theories have emerged from it. While political scientists, development specialists and economists have done considerable work on Middle Eastern data and country cases, much of it is ideographic in focus. Comparative work is typically limited to intra-regional comparisons and tends to draw on general theories rather than contributing to them.

This project acted as a facilitator to re-energise comparative political economy research on the MENA region. While tackling some of the large political economy issues that are MENA-specific, its primary aim was to put the region into wider comparative context in the developing world. It not only tested the applicability of wider political economy concepts in MENA, but also drew on regional cases to generate theoretical innovation in comparative political economy.

Workshops

As part of the project, three workshops were organised bringing together leading academics from around the world.

In October 2015, the project convened the first research workshop for its flagship project about public goods provision and human development outcomes in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa resource rich states. The workshop addressed the puzzle of why resource-rich states in MENA score markedly better than resource-rich states in sub-Saharan Africa on government effectiveness and human development, both in direct comparison and in terms of the respective differences to non-rentiers in both regions.

In March 2016, the project held its second workshop in Kuwait where participants discussed data-sharing and cooperative research projects on a number of topics including supply and demand for Kuwaitis in the private sector and initiatives to plug the gap, triangulating the labour market in Saudi Arabia: surveying firms, nationals and expats and uncovering network processes in the study of labour migration.

Download the workshop report

In September 2016, the project convened its third research workshop at LSE ‘Varieties of rentierism’. The workshop discussed why some oil-rich countries perfom better than others and compared case studies from India, Kuwait, Angola and Algeria.