This book summarizes the constraints to and opportunities for deepening economic integration within the MENA region and beyond. Trade and investment reform are discussed together with physical connectivity, cross-border trade facilitation, infrastructure networks, and the vital role of logistics.
This book analyses and assesses the Agadir Agreement’s impact on economic integration, its effect on political cooperation, and its role in promoting peace between participating countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, the geo-political situation in MENA has further drifted towards instability and uncertainty. Expert analysis of the region seems to lurch from one crisis to another without moving beyond a focus on conflict. Few scholars have recognised that the MENA governments have long regarded regional economic integration as a chief policy objective to facilitate intra-regional trade and promote political cooperation and peace. Realising the shortcomings of the various integrative processes, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan signed the Agadir Agreement in 2004. To this date, it stands as one of the most significant economic agreements in the MENA region. Taking into account this variety of factors, this book offers a new assessment of the pull between unity and disunity in the Middle East and North Africa region
The paper analyzes the scope and implications of greater economic integration in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). After reviewing whether MENA satisfies the defining characteristics of a region, it documents the low level of regional economic interaction. It argues that gains from greater regional interactions will depend primarily on implementing domestic reform and external policies that, in any case, are needed for the region to benefit from the broader process of globalization of the world economy. It also discusses measures aimed directly at facilitating regional interaction.
From the unification of North and South Yemen, to the struggle for Mahgreb unity, and the experiences of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, this book presents a complex portrait of the history and prospects for Arab integration.
This important book examines the impact of recent changes in the world economy on trade policy within the MENA region and its economic relations with the rest of the world.
This volume offers to compare and explain variances of regionalism in Asia by disclosing the distinctive features of regional arrangements and how they evolved during the 1990s and 2000s against the background of a changing global environment. Moreover, it takes up a genuinely ‘inter-Asian’ perspective. By analysing and comparing diverse manifestations of regional integration agreements across Asia and its different sub-regions, it sets out to track their common characteristics and sub-regional facets with respect to their establishment, design and consequences. In addition, political processes accompanying their negotiation and implementation are scrutinized. The analysis encompasses nine case studies written by renowned scholars who together as a group combine an extraordinary mixture of different disciplinary backgrounds as well as expertise on shapes and processes of regional integration in different parts of Asia. The case studies seize on some of the most important features and controversial issues characterizing the second regionalism. Such are the emergence and impact of overlapping FTAs, regional financial and sub-regional economic integration and cooperation, power and the politics of regional integration as well as the nexus between conflict resolution, state failure and regional integration.
The accords and protocols that underlie the Arab and Israeli peace agreements set into place economic policies and political processes so flawed that they are bound to fail. The chapters in this volume look at the diplomatic and historical precedents that have led to this situation and they debate - some cynically and some sympathetically - the reasons why the institutional structures and trade regimes the process has created are so weak. But for whatever reason, the structural flaws built into the Middle East peace process are not only biased toward the dominant players but against the people who most want peace.
This book surveys major economic issues in the development of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region since World War II. It presents a framework of analysis highlighting underlying continuities in the region's approach to issues of growth, management of oil and natural resources, post-conflict environments, progress in trade liberalization and regional integration, the use of industrial policy, labor market adjustment and unemployment, educational attainment and poverty incidence. At the same time, this book focuses on emerging differences across countries in the region in the prevailing approach to addressing such challenges most notably between the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and other MENA countries.This book also incorporates a discussion of tools and methods used by development practitioners and briefly examines issues of aid effectiveness. The approach used is intended to appeal to a wide audience including students of economic development, political scientists and development practitioners.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.
This volume examines the economic and political incentives surrounding Arab regional integration. The contributors focus on three issues: the failure of past attempts at integration, the impact on countries involved in any future integration and the possible lessons from other regional experiences, particularly the European Union. A common theme is the importance of extending the reach of cooperation efforts beyond trade in goods.