The political economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are often divided into three overarching types, including the oil monarchies, the non-oil monarchies, and the non-oil republics. But what explains variation in the welfare regimes within these categories, particularly among the non-oil economies which lack the rentier earnings needed to buy political compliance with comprehensive welfare benefits for citizens? Post-independence regimes in the non-oil economies adopted broadly similar systems, with limited social insurance schemes favoring government employees and especially members of the military and intelligence services. Yet the breadth and depth of coverage as well as the precise nature of social insurance schemes varies substantially within the non-oil economies and even within the more populist non-oil republics. A comparison of Tunisia and Lebanon is particularly interesting. The two countries are both upper middle income, non-oil economies with relatively small, educated populations yet they have vastly different welfare regimes. Among Arab countries - and, indeed, much of the Global South – Tunisia has a fairly developed welfare state with comparatively comprehensive social protections for citizens and a big public role in the welfare regime. Lebanon, on the other hand, has a residualist welfare regime that entails minimal state protection and public benefits and those are largely reserved for the poor (but, in practice, primarily those with political and social connections). Private providers predominate and the state has little regulatory capacity over the system. Varied levels of politicized "identity"-based cleavages in relatively homogenous Tunisia and fractionalized Lebanon partially explain these contrasting patterns of national welfare solidary. But these divisions reflect and complement a more explicitly political story about the nature of post-colonial state-building in the two countries. By tracing welfare regime construction in Tunisia and Lebanon and situating them in a larger set of regional country cases, the proposed paper promises to develop a greater understanding of redistribution within the MENA. This is an increasingly important empirical issue as scholars struggle to make sense of the political and economic foundations of the recent Arab uprisings and policymakers prioritize socioeconomic reform throughout the region. To address these questions, this paper relies on descriptive statistics on public and private social expenditures on health, education, and social protection as well as comparative historical analyses of the post-independence processes of building welfare institutions in the non-oil MENA economies, with a particular emphasis on Tunisia and Lebanon.