MER Article Egyptian Privatization After decades of delay, privatization in Egypt is now taking off. [1] Since 1993, 119 of 314 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been fully or partially sold. [2] These have been mainly manufacturing ventures, but the government has also pledged to offer utilities, public sector banks and insurance Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 8 min read
MER Article Labor and the Challenge of Economic Restructuring in Iran During the last 20 years, the Iranian economy has had to adjust to a revolution, an eight-year war with Iraq, economic isolation and the collapse of its oil revenues. As a result, Iran witnessed the complete undoing of its gains in per capita income from the boom years of the 1970s. The generation o Djavad Salehi-Isfahani • 12 min read
MER Article How Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Even Egypt Became IMF "Success Stories" in the 1990s Just as European missionaries were the spiritual handmaidens of nineteenth-century colonialism, so has the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assumed a modern-day mission in support of world trade, finance and investment. The mission aims to convert the benighted heathen in developing countries to th Karen Pfeifer • 12 min read
MER Article The Working Class and Peasantry in the Middle East Since the early 1970s the working class and peasantry of the Middle East have been socially reorganized while their political salience has been reconfigured. These processes are associated with a transition from economic nationalism, industrially biased statist development and populist politics towa Joel Beinin • 15 min read
MER Article Alternatives to Neoliberalism A growing network of labor and human rights activists, women’s and indigenous people’s groups and grassroots movements is shaping a transnational consensus on global economic reform that challenges the ideological and programmatic triumph of neoliberalism over the last two decades. These activists r Steve Niva • 3 min read
MER Article Reform or Reaction? This issue of Middle East Report presents critical -- and timely -- analysis of the impact of neoliberal economic policies in the Middle East and North Africa. Authors representing a variety of disciplines and viewpoints explore the dilemmas confronting progressive forces searching for alternative p Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Karen Pfeifer, Steve Niva • 4 min read
MER Article Room to Breathe Less than a block from the seventeenth-century walls that surround Rabat’s medina (old city) is the Association Tamaynut. Inside the three-room office one can attend meetings, listen to lectures and participate in passionate discussions. A young man, Ibrahim, is there every weekday from morning unti Daniel Burton-Rose • 9 min read
MER Article Two Faces of Janus Eight years after the end of the war in Lebanon, the discrepancy between free minds and free markets is growing ever sharper. Since 1992, Lebanon’s billionaire prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, has been the individual most responsible for outlining an economic program for the post-war era. The prime Michael Young • 10 min read
MER Article Historical Road Maps for the "New World Order" Peter Gran, Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History (Syracuse University Press, 1996). Chris Toensing • 8 min read
MER Article Diminishing Possibilities in Algeria Selima Ghezali was born in Bouira, Algeria in 1958. After obtaining a degree in literature, she began working as a teacher of French at the Khemis el-Khechna high school, where she was active in the General Union of Algerian Workers. In the 1980s, Ghezali joined the Algerian feminist movement then f Geoff Hartman • 9 min read
MER Article Myths and Money “The price of prosperity has already been paid,” read an ad that Lebanon’s Investment Development Authority ran in the summer of 1996. “Now is the time to harvest.” The ad also mentioned, euphemistically, that the price had been “a period of unrest.” The message was meant to convince international i Volker Perthes • 15 min read
MER Article Syria Between Two Transitions In the recent years, Syria has inhabited the two processes of fundamental transition. The first is a transition from a statist economy to a greater liberalization or, to use a more accurate term, intifah (open-door policy). The second of these transitions is from a state of belligerency with Israel Hisham Melhem • 14 min read
