Economist Magazine review of 2002 UN report on Arab Development

[attaboy]

Arab development

Self-doomed to failure

An unsparing new report by Arab scholars explains why their region lags behind so much of the world

Jul 4th 2002 | from the print edition


WHAT went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the times? It is not an obviously unlucky region. Fatly endowed with oil, and with its people sharing a rich cultural, religious and linguistic heritage, it is faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic conflict. It shook off its colonial or neo-colonial legacies long ago, and the countries that had revolutions should have had time to recover from them. But, with barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can.


Across dinner tables from Morocco to the Gulf, but above all in Egypt, the Arab world's natural leader, Arab intellectuals endlessly ask one another how and why things came to turn out in this unnecessarily bad way. A team of such scholars (it is indicative of the barriers to freely expressed thought that there are almost no worthwhile think-tanks in the Arab world) have now spent a year putting their experience to diagnostic use in the “Arab Human Development Report 2002”, published this week by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).







The article closes with:




The most delicate issue of all, again carefully skirted by the authors of the report, is the part that Islam plays in delaying and impeding the Arab world's advance towards the ever-receding renaissance that its intellectuals crave. One of the report's signed articles explains Islam's support for justice, peace, tolerance, equilibrium and all good things besides. But most secularists believe that the pervasive Islamisation of society, which in several Arab countries has largely replaced the frightening militancy of the 1980s and early 1990s, has played a significant part in stifling constructive Arab thought.


From their schooldays onwards, Arabs are instructed that they should not defy tradition, that they should respect authority, that truth should be sought in the text and not in experience. Fear of fawda (chaos) and fitna (schism) are deeply engrained in much Arab-Islamic teaching. “The role of thought”, wrote a Syrian intellectual “is to explain and transmit...and not to search and question.”


Such tenets never held back the great Arab astronomers and mathematicians of the Middle Ages. But now, it seems, they hold sway, discouraging critical thought and innovation and helping to produce a great army of young Arabs, jobless, unskilled and embittered, cut off from changing their own societies by democratic means. Islam at least offers them a little self-respect. With so many paths closed to them, some are now turning their dangerous anger on the western world.



Arab development: Self-doomed to failure | The Economist







I skimmed through the report because it is loaded down with the kind of verbiage that discourages a person to persevere.




Here is something I picked up on in Chapter 6 page 91.



Second, many Arab countries provide subsidies,
mainly to military and non-military government
employees, that allow beneficiaries to
obtain consumer goods and perishables at
below-market prices. The value of subsidies to
households is not readily calculated.

Meanwhile, although beneficial to those who
can take advantage of it, the system of subsidies
does little to help the work force in the
private sector or the self-employed in the organized
or informal sector. In effect, subsidy
regimes mask the real need for an equitable income-
distribution policy that takes into account
the interests of all workers.




Translation: bribes are paid to select groups to ensure loyalty.



No doubt public sector jobs are used as bribes and also bribes must be paid to obtain a public sector job.








Chapter 6 page 95:





The private sector needs incentives conducive
to its growth and willingness to invest and take
risk. The fact that the public sector can no
longer be relied on to generate large numbers
of new jobs makes it all the more urgent to encourage
the private sector to grow, to open opportunities,
and to expand markets and
networks.

Governments have a central role to play in
creating a positive enabling environment for
private sector growth. For example, fiscal policies
need to focus on the consolidation of public
finances, efficient and equitable
mechanisms for the allocation of public expenditure,
and the provision of adequate
room for private initiative--in short, sound
macroeconomic policies. More attention
needs to be given to strengthening central
banks and financial services and, in other
areas, to economic incentives, efficient infrastructure,
effective import/export facilities to
enhance private investment, and to aspects of
good governance such as reduced red tape and
an effective rule of law that commands citizens’
assent and trust.

Governance issues will be discussed in
more detail in the next chapter, but it is important
to note here that good governance
practices play a key role in revitalizing privatesector-
led economic growth. With respect to
the rule of law, an equitable, well-functioning
legal system, including an efficient and effective
judiciary, is critical in the economic as well
as the social sphere. Other aspects of good
governance needed to establish stability and
trust among private-sector partners in development
include a strong commitment to public accountability; a regulatory system that is
fair, transparent, effective and evenhandedly
enforced (for example, in attacking public and
private monopolies); and appropriate legislation
(including, for example, protection of intellectual
property rights).




Translation: corruption and a lack of rule of law discourages private sector investment.







The report can be found here:


AHDR Reports: Detailed Contents

[harrybarracuda]

It misses out that most wealthy Arab businessmen would rather employ cheap, overworked Asian labourers than locals, who generally wouldn't touch jobs "beneath" them anyway, yet still bleat about having no jobs in some countries.

Several countries have tried implementing "Arabisation" programs over the years, mandating a percentage of jobs that must be filled by locals; they almost always end in failure because it simply ends up with work not getting done.

[attaboy]

I wonder if this is what Mitt Romney meant?

[harrybarracuda]

Don't be stupid, he's just a talking head. He didn't "mean" anything, whoever wrote the script for him is the one that needs the kick up the arse.

[attaboy]

I'm not being stupid. I'm having a good laugh.

[attaboy]

Bribes, corruption, a lack of rule of law. The report also discusses a lack of human rights and a lack of women's rights. Can these problems be attributed to "the power of at least culture and a few other things" as Romney suggested about the Israeli success, or do these things just happen to Arabs in the classic liberal passive sense?