How do decisions about the economy affect the inclusivity and direction a population is taken after a longtime leader has been deposed? Employing a structured case study of post-2011 Egypt, this paper reconsiders dominant theoretical understandings of the relationship between political transitions and neoliberal economic reform. Based on interviews from relevant actors in the US and Egypt, primary documents including Egypt’s Closing Account of the General Budget, and material acquired from international financial institutions, this paper argues elites from both the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as well as businessmen connected to Military Inc. pursued economic policies that exclude popular social forces. This not only continued to enable crony capitalism but also reorganized the economy around the Defense Ministry, Military Inc.’s companies, and foreign investors partnering with them. Specifically, the paper examines how ties between transnational actors and those that oversee and distribute capital accumulation in Egypt help maintain and redefine an exclusivist political arena. Thus, it explores this topic by using the elites’ reform discourse, economic indicators from the state budget, and foreign direct investment to examine the changes and continuities in Egypt since Mubarak’s ejection. Therefore, this paper considers elements such as examining economic growth in the context of declining revenue injections, the effect and increases in the unaccountable “officers’ economy” on the economy, and the relationship between domestic power wielders and international actors and the ways in which this shapes the practice of contentious politics. By examining political transitions through a lens of political economy, we gain the capacity to explain lingering continuities, new changes, and gain insights into the lack of reform such as in the security sector or the media. More than path dependency, explaining transitions through a political economy approach exposes the crevasse between what elites are trying to do and how it produces resistance to these plans. Thus, such research findings become crucial for explaining the ongoing processes of political change in transitional settings because of how it defines and redefines incumbency and opposition. Thus, this paper contributes to the established debates on the political economy of transitions by adding a prominent case from the Arab world to cases that have largely come from Eastern European and Latin American experiences.

Comparatively, Yemen is situated between the 2011 uprisings; the relative tranquility of the GCC rentier states; and US-led regime-change military interventions in Libya and Iraq as opposed to exercise of ‘soft’ Western power in Tunisia and Egypt. It is one of the five republics where mass popular demonstrations demanded the downfall of (what Owen called) “presidents for life.” Whereas four other ‘Arab spring’ republics face the Mediterranean, however, Yemen lies at the geographic and socio-economic periphery of the Arabian Peninsula – effectively ‘under’ the GCC petro-monarchies. Low intensity American firepower targets enemies of the US, the GCC, and Yemen’s government. To untangle these comparisons I modify Johan Galtung’s classic schematic ‘structural theory of imperialism’ mapping relations among cores (the US and Europe), cores of peripheries (KSA and the GCC), and peripheries of peripheries (Yemen) in terms of ‘harmonies’ and ‘disharmonies’ of interests. Decisions, models, investments, opportunities for employment, weapons, lessons, policing, communications media, and so forth, originate in the core, whereas the periphery provides inept or disruptive students, consumers, a reserve labor force, make-overs, battlefields or targets, disorder, and psychological dismay. Galtung postulates a harmony of interests between the core and the core of the periphery and a lot of disharmony in the periphery of the periphery. The methodology is comparative even though the focus is on one country. I will compare, as measures of what Galtung calls vertical relations, flows of bilateral aid, corporate investments, diplomatic engagement, weapons transfers, military deployments, and people between the US (and possibly the EU) and the following countries: Tunisia and Egypt, whose transitions did not involve direct foreign military intervention; Iraq and Libya, both sites of forcible regime change; and Yemen, to date an in-between case of armed engagement, where, uniquely, the US backed a GCC- managed transition. I expect Yemen will come in last on all the relations indicators (not sure about per capita controls or what else the data might show.) Table 2 will compare US and Saudi relations with Yemen using the same indicators. Except for drone attacks against AQAP, this data (particularly aid and population flows) will probably show much stronger vertical relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia than between Yemen and the US.

The paper that I propose to present at the 2015 MESA meeting is part of a panel on the political economy of upheaval and war. Oil is, of course, a central aspect of the political economy of the region, and has had a role both in countries that have experienced serious conflict (Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria) and in countries in which the Arab Spring did not generate widespread violence (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Oman). The paper will contribute to our understanding of the political economy of conflict in two ways, one methodological, the other substantive. My methodological argument concerns how we ought to draw on the lessons of other parts of the world when trying to understand the causal impact of natural resource rents on conflict (or its absence) in the region. Specifically, I focus on the role of conditionality in understanding the resource curse. A conditional argument is one in which the causal mechanism (in this case, a causal mechanism by which rents affect civil war) occurs in only a subset of possible cases. Scholars who write on the resource curse very frequently assert that the underlying causal mechanisms are conditional, but tend to employ large-n methodologies that do not adequately account for these conditionalities. If the resource curse is conditional (and most think it is) then the appropriate methods for studying it are small-n comparisons and within case strategies, such as process-tracing. In the empirical, second, part of the paper, I turn to the existing, and rich, literature on natural resource rents and civil conflict in other regions, especially Sub-Saharan Africa. I show how we can use the findings of this literature to understand the conflicts in the post-Arab Spring Middle East, and that this is best done by paying close attention to specific causal mechanisms, and how they might, or might not, apply to specific cases in the Arab world. The effect of oil rents on political outcomes will vary across the cases, and our methods should reflect this fact of the political world.

This paper will analyze changes in state agricultural development and subsidy policy in Tunisia from 1980 – 2010, as those policies interact with world commodity price movements. In this way it will analyze and historicize the successive and overlapping determinations, over various time spans, which explain the politics of capital flows and commodity imports and exports during the most recent commodity price run-up, from 2005 – 2010. Common analyses of these crises tend to link price-hikes to countries’ over-dependence on food and fuel imports. In that way, they interpret that dependence as a phenomenon outside of government control. I will challenge this form of analysis by examining the role of the state in determining domestic prices and the direction of capital flows, and deciding what is or is not produced through its agricultural policies. This will involve examining state food politics through three stages: first, the stage of extraction from agriculture alongside subsidized urban consumption – the early 1970s through the mid-1980s. A second stage was the adjustment phase from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, as low food prices subtended a transformation in state development policies, as the government reduced consumption end subsidies and redirected support to the largest farmers. A third phase ran from the early 2000s to the present. The state recommitted to consumer-end subsidies, in order to buffer the effects of world price shocks. Simultaneously, the state underinvested in the non-irrigated smallholder sector, thereby further locking in import dependency and encouraging underemployment. This paper will rely on several data sets: one, production prices broken down according to farm size, and so taking account of input costs. Two, data on other forms of governmental support for farmers, particularly loans and credits. Three, time series data on sales prices for the major commodities, so as to evaluate the price scissors effect. And four, information from the Cereals Office and the National Oil Office concerning price formation in order to understand the politics of prices. In summary, this paper analyzes world commodity price movements into the field of historical sociology through a closer examination of state agency, by examining how price inflation affects state capacity by forcing the state to commit budgetary resources to price protection, and thereby diverting it from committing resources to other developmental paths, while also examining the social origins of state agricultural policies, locating them in various networks with ties to state power.

Since the British mandate, Jordan has been linked to nearly every major violent conflict in the region. From the 1948 War to civil war in Lebanon and through to today’s regional conflicts, the effects on Jordan’s socio-political and socio-economic development have been profound. This paper analyzes Jordan’s relationship to its longest war, the case of Iraq beginning in the 1980s. The two countries share historical and social linkages in which war has played a large role. The character of violent conflict in Iraq has shifted from multiple instances of inter-state conflict in the 1980s and 1990s to current bouts of occupation and sub-state conflict. How have changing patterns of violent conflict in Iraq impacted Jordan? Or more specifically, how has Jordan become embedded in the enduring violence? The paper pursues this issue in three political economy areas: trade relations, fiscal politics, and labor. The argument is that the political-economics of this war have contributed to Hashemite political survival at the cost of Jordan’s socio-economic underdevelopment. In terms of theory, this paper contributes to a wider scholarly literature focused on war economies. Much of the debate has revolved around whether violence endures because of economic reasons (making money and getting ahead) or non-economic reasons (socio-ethnic diversity). Less attention has been devoted to the effects of war economies; how they become regionalized and embedded in neighboring societies and states. Moreover, the great majority of case studies do not address Arab countries and when they do appear it is often within quantitative data sets. Consequently, this paper constitutes an effort to address, systematically, the evolution of a regional war economy binding Iraq and Jordan in consequential ways. Jordan’s trade relations with war-time Iraq served crucial constituencies for the Hashemites during times of social instability. Jordan’s ability to manage high levels of debt and fiscal weakness depended upon its economic links to Iraq, particularly regarding energy. An important implication of these arrangements has been a weakening of labor security within segments of the Jordanian population. In addition to utilizing the secondary literature on Jordanian and Iraqi political economies, this paper is based upon interview research with Iraqi and Jordanian traders, businessmen, economists, as well as trade data and new labor surveys. This paper is part of a larger project examining Jordan’s relationship to regional war. There are methodological challenges and data problems with this project and the paper will discuss those issues.