There is broad agreement on three overarching facts about the economic evolution of Egypt and Tunisia. First, they were the celebrated macroeconomic “success stories” of neoliberalism in the Arab Mediterranean and participated fully in the worldwide economic boom of the 2000-2008 period. Rapid economic growth, liberalization, privatization, success in attracting foreign investment and expanding exports, and constricting the public sector to enable the private sector to take over as the engine of growth and new job creation, all accorded with the neoliberal model. Second, the spread of negative features ultimately underpinned the uprisings of 2010-2011, including stubborn unemployment, especially among educated youth, the expanding informal economy and uneven regional development. Organized labor was constrained and salaries and wages for the majority of the workforce stagnated or fell as the incomes of a wealthy, well-connected elite soared. Public services were constricted while ownership and control of assets like land were redistributed to the elite through endemic graft and systematic corruption. The state was fused to the wealthy owners of capital, giving most benefits of liberalization and privatization to a class of crony capitalists. Fraud in politics and the often-brutal repression of labor and opposition movements led to rising anger among the citizenry, with maneuvering by the ruling families to convert their presidencies into dynastic rule a final and fatal insult. Throughout the 2000s, despite political oppression, these opposition movements grew among both the middle and working classes. Third, as of September 2013, none of the governments that followed the ousting of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes in 2011 had been able to present a coherent program for more equitable and sustainable economic transformation, while political turmoil, violence – in Tunisia’s case, two political assassinations, and, in Egypt’s case, a military coup d’état -- and economic uncertainty prevailed. Aside from the perpetuation of slow growth, rising unemployment and inequality due to the atmosphere of mistrust and uncertainty, there is a wide range of possible alternatives for economic transformation. From “right to left” these include (1) neoliberalism with an inclusive mask, as promoted by the IMF and the Deauville Partnership, (2) an elite-led developmental state and industrial policy in the East Asian mode, (3) a more egalitarian developmental state as proposed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), and (4) a social-democratic formation as encoded in the work of NGOs and the independent trade union movements.

Discussions about political economy in the Arab world before the Arab spring emphasized theorizing the democratic deficit and the apparent stability of authoritarian regimes. In explaining these, both the direct as well as the indirect effects of oil on the region’s political economy featured prominently. The regime fragility that has been in evidence since the start of the Arab spring in late 2010 has been attributed, interestingly, to various economic sources too. These range from the inability of the Arab economies to provide adequate employment and increasing income inequality to rises in the price of food. These analyses thus assumed that Arab economies were somehow economically distressed. Indeed, the (mostly economic) explanations offered for the recent social revolutions in the Arab world have been so widespread that it is difficult (if they are to be believed) to see how revolution was avoided for so long, a notable reversal of the previously held doctrine regarding regime stability. The extent to which Arab economies were distressed is the central issue of this paper. Thus, the poverty rates, food prices, rates of unemployment (including when available educated and youth), income inequality, and wages and salaries of select MENA economies are examined. The purpose is 1) to understand how (if at all) these economies were distressed and 2) to learn whether the economies that were most distressed were the ones that experienced revolts. The findings cast doubt on the existence of a strong and direct association between economic hardship and social protest, so readily assumed by some analysts. The results suggest that such a relationship is far more tenuous and contingent. Nevertheless, the weak correspondence between economic distress and political revolt is consistent with the research of social revolts elsewhere in the Middle East, notably the Iranian revolution of 1978-9.

The Middle East and North Africa is at a critical juncture. The region has the highest youth unemployment rates in the world as a result of several factors, including institutional rigidities, education systems that fail to provide flexible skills that are needed in the global economy, and a demographic “youth bulge” that has increased supply pressures on the education systems, labor markets and housing markets of the region. After decades of social, economic, and political exclusion, young people across the region have been at the forefront of the social unrest taking place over the past two years. This paper will examine the conditions of MENA youth on eve of the Arab Spring. Recently, several micro data sets have become available that better allow researchers to understand the socio-economic situation of Arab youth in 2010 and early 2011 as the Arab Spring began unfolding. Specifically, this paper will use youth surveys from Morocco and Tunisia, and labor force surveys from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia to explore the lives of young people in countries that have experienced revolution (Egypt and Tunisia) and from those that have not (Jordan and Morocco). The primary focus of this paper will be labor market outcomes of youth. Using labor force surveys, this study will discuss employment outcomes for young workers compared to outcomes for older workers. One preliminary finding is the following: While the Tunisian economy was improving in the years leading up the Arab Spring, that labor market outcomes for young people were worsening. Unemployment rates for those under the age of 30 were increasing even though unemployment rates were falling for older workers. By 2010 unemployment rates for 15-29 year olds were four times higher than those for workers aged 30-64 and this ratio was even higher when comparing those workers with college degrees. This paper will use youth surveys to analyze the transition from schooling to work. This transition can take as long as 2-3 years for college graduates who often queue for the ‘right’ jobs. Thus, Arab youth were under severe economic challenges in 2010 and 2011. However, this paper finds that the socio-economic conditions for youth were similar between countries that experienced revolutions and those that did not, implying that explanations for the causes of the revolutions must lie elsewhere.

The last two years have seen tremendous change in the Middle East. Protests that began in Tunisia in December 2010 have since swept through the region, driven by citizens from all classes and fueled by long standing economic, social and political grievances vis à vis their respective regimes. Four entrenched authoritarian leaders have left power thus far with the possibility of more change in the coming year. While it remains premature to predict how substantive these changes will be to the political map of the Middle East, those already underway suggest a new path unfolding in the region. Much remains unknown though about this path. Economic issues underpinned protests in the region, with calls for social justice at the forefront of protestors’ demands for change. Despite this centrality, the economic dimensions of uprisings in the region remain relatively unexplored by scholars. Transitions underway raise several important questions about the nature of shifting power structures and their relationship to divergent outcomes in the region. What is the relationship between uprisings in the region and the economic interests of domestic and international actors? How have economic demands by different actors shaped political outcomes? What influence have regional and international pressures had on the kind of domestic political transformations that have occurred thus far? To what extent does this influence represent a departure from the past? These questions have been not been engaged substantively thus far by scholars, and their answers promise to elucidate the possibilities and obstacles for far-reaching political and economic reform in the Middle East. This paper considers these questions through the lens of events in Egypt and Morocco since 2011. Situated at the intersection of the literatures on political economy and international relations, the paper focuses on the economic debates and positions of domestic actors and responses by international actors including Western donors and those from the Gulf States. Attention is given in particular to the aid strategies offered by international actors and the domestic response in both countries in order to understand the multitude of economic interests competing to shape a new status quo in the region. Informed by extensive fieldwork recently in both countries, this paper is part of a larger project on the economic dimensions and origins of the Arab Spring.

Although women in MENA have the lowest participation in the labor force compared to the rest of the region, they have had the fastest growing rate of participation in the world. This process occurred throughout the region along with other transformations such as rising education, decline in fertility rate and infant mortality as well maternal mortality rate. Women also played a significant role in the protests and uprising, which led to the downfall of the regimes in the case of Egypt and Tunisia. Women, many of them young and with university degrees joined street protest and in some cases were at the forefront. In this paper the focus is on women’s economic participation, with a focus both on employment in general and entrepreneurial activity in particular, using four datasets—the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys (WBES, consisting of 102 countries during 2002-2011) and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor dataset (GEM, with 72 countries during 2001-2009), the World Values Survey and ILO data on employment. Since female entrepreneurs are often more likely to create jobs for women, an examination of entrepreneur data, in conjunction with attitudes data and employment data can provide insights into issues women workers are likely to face in the aftermath of the Arab spring. The results of the World Values Surveys and country-level macroeconomic data, indicate that cultural attitudes are not positive towards women’s employment. This can easily translate into lack of access for women seeking both paid employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, and could result in an female employment rates stagnating, if not declining, especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, due to economic problems and political instability. Since women’s access to economic resources is one indicator of women’s socio-economic status, any set-back for women will tend to translate into set back particularly for those who wish to enter micro enterprises (women from low and lower income household). This could lead to a decline of women’s economic status and a set back in their social and political role.

By many accounts, one of the key major factors shaping Egypt’s Arab Spring revolutionary momentum was the dismal state of its economy. Since the Arab Spring though, the economic situation in Egypt has only worsened. While the real growth rate stood at 5.1% in 2010, it plummeted to 1.2% in 2011. 25-30% of the youth population is now unemployed, over 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, and Egypt’s external debt in 2011 reached almost 40 billion dollars, significantly more than its foreign reserves of exchange and gold at close to 30 billion dollars. With political uncertainty looming large, foreign investors are still shying away. For many Egyptians then, US economic assistance can be a blessing. The 4.8 billion IMF package, for example, can potentially help stabilize the economy, move resources into free-trade zones, and promote job growth. For skeptics however, the IMF intervention is more of curse. It is perceived as a way of ensuring continued payment on the hefty loans taken by Mubarak’s regime. Exacerbating the problem, a majority of Egyptians have been skeptical of previous IMF interventions which led to the shrinking of the public sector, the rolling back of subsidies, and the increase in prices on basic foodstuffs. At a time, where Mohammad Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood is trying to win more popular support for its policies, including the IMF loans, Egypt’s population remains suspicious. In fact, nationalists (both secular and Islamists) worry about aid conditionality; the poor worry about further privatization, and a significant sector of Egypt’s pious agonize about the un-Islamic “tenants” of the loans themselves. Will these loans come with “interest-based” stipulations prohibited by Islamic law? Will foreign companies introduce new industries (linked to tourism for example) that might offend the Islamic sensibilities of Egypt’s masses? In the politically fractured and rather unstable country of Egypt, economic development becomes all the more imperative for the country’s successful transition. Yet, several questions remain outstanding. Primarily, will citizens endorse US assistance as the country moves forward on its economic trajectory? Our paper will address this and other questions. We will utilize an original dataset of experimental and observational survey data of 3000 Egyptian citizens to test our hypotheses and advance our arguments