MER Article Cairo's Poor The proliferation of more than 100 squatter communities with some 6 million inhabitants signifies only one, but perhaps the starkest, component of the growing socioeconomic disparity [1] in Cairo since Sadat’s infitah (“opening up” or economic liberalization) in 1974 and the more recent implementation of the IMF’s structural Asef Bayat • 12 min read
MER Article The Crisis of the Turkish State In early June, some 30,000 high-level diplomats, state delegations, specialists and academics from around the globe will gather in Istanbul for the century’s last world summit, the Second UN Conference for Human Settlement, or Habitat II. As the delegates come out of their sessions in the “conference valley” Ertugrul Kurkcu • 14 min read
MER Article Categories of Power Regular readers of this magazine will know that one of our defining characteristics has been a commitment to understanding the Middle East in terms of political economy: the relationship between forms of political power and the social relations of production and distribution at the local and international levels. Edward Said’ Joel Beinin • 5 min read
From Zionism to Capitalism The Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” seems to be in trouble. The due date for the redeployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank to allow for election of the Palestinian governing authority has long come and gone. Expanded construction in “Greater Jerusalem,” land grabbing by settlers throughout the West Bank, bombings Yoav Peled • 12 min read
MER Article The Saudis, the French and the Embargo The successful maintenance of a near total embargo on Iraq owes to a number of factors, ranging from geography to post-Cold War global economies. Iraq’s limited access to the sea can be easily monitored, while its record of regional aggression has deprived Baghdad of local friends. Despite some brea Roger Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 6 min read
MER Article Politics in the Middle East Elie Kedourie, Politics in the Middle East (New York: Oxford, 1992). Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 1992). GABRIEL YOUNG • 3 min read
MER Article "Tilt but Don't Spill" “Kaj dar-o mariz” (the jar is tilted but not spilled) describes how the Islamic Republic came stumbling through its first decade. Unlike Iraq, Iran fought the war between them entirely on its own resources, which enabled the state to maintain a sense of achievement and independence. [1] However, with the Kaveh Ehsani • 16 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1994) The question of population and development needs to be framed first and foremost as a question of equity. The articles in this issue address explicitly the matter of gender equity in families and societies, in ways that challenge the notion that Middle Eastern birth and fertility rates can be neatly The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article An Interview with Charles Shammas Charles Shammas is the founder and project director of Mattin, an industry promotion organization in the West Bank. He is also a founding member of al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization, and of the Jerusalem-based Center for International Human Rights Enforcement. Joe Stork spoke w Joe Stork • 7 min read
MER Article Studies of Structural Adjustment Bent Hansen, Egypt and Turkey: The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity and Growth (World Bank, 1991). Heba Handoussa and Gilliam Potter, eds. Employment and Structural Adjustment: Egypt in the 1990s (AUC, 1991). Mustafa Kamil al-Sayyid, “Privatization: The Egyptian Debate,” Cairo Papers in Social Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 6 min read
MER Article The Economic Dimension of Yemeni Unity To the outside world, the unification of the two Yemens in 1990 resembled the German experience in miniature. North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic, YAR) was considered a laissez faire market economy, whereas the South (the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, PDRY) was “the communist one.” When, w Sheila Carapico • 17 min read
MER Article Global Economic Integration Conventional definitions imagine world trade as taking places among nations -- international trade, it is called. Convention also holds that everyone is best off when such trade is carried on as freely as possible. Neither the definition nor the polemic of free traders has changed much, except for a Doug Henwood • 7 min read
