Achievements and Deficits of the Arab MENA Economies on the Eve of the Current Global Corona Crisis

Abstract

Our exercise of standard development accounting attempts to arrive at a synthesis of the performance of Arab countries as they approach the abyss of the impending global economic recession and health crisis, connected with the Corona (Covid-19) pandemic. The choice of our indicators was guided by world system (Frank, ReOrient: Global economy in the Asian Age Ewing, University of California Press, 1998) and dependency approaches to development (Bornschier et al., Transnational corporations and underdevelopment. Frederic Praeger, New York, 1985); by later globalization-oriented debates about development (Tausch, Int J Heal Plan Manag 27(1):2–33, 2012a; Tausch, International macroquantitative data. Faculty of Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest. Available at http://www.uni-corvinus.hu/index.php?id=47854&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=0&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=31638&tx_ttnews%5BcalendarYear%5D=2012&tx_ttnews%5BcalendarMonth%5D=6&cHash=af8ef6888f7c9922b83b113f71c1ca32 , 2012b; Tausch, Int Soc Sci J 68(227–228):79–99. DOI: 10.1111/issj.12190, 2018); and by indicators featuring internal, “home-made” restrictions on democracy and gender equality. The choice of our indicators was also guided by research on Islamism, and the issues of the way, religion, culture and values are structured in the region (Grinin et al. 2020). Our data support the perspective of the UNDP Arab Human Development Report (UNDP, Arab Human development report 2016: Youth and the prospects for human development in a changing reality. UNDP, New York. Available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/arab-human-development-report-2016-youth-and-prospects-human-development-changing-reality , 2016) which diagnosed that, deficient as it may be, the state-led development model in the Arab world has expanded access to key entitlements and raised some levels of human development. Arab countries had a relatively low incidence of poverty and income inequality, shielding disadvantaged groups from some of the worst economic pressures of our times. On all accounts of standard development accounting (Grinin et al., Economic cycles, crises, and the global periphery, Springer, Cham, 2016; Tausch, Int Soc Sci J 61(202):467–488, 2010; Tausch and Heshmati, Globalization, the human condition and sustainable development in the twenty-first century: Cross-national perspectives and European implications. Anthem Press, London/New York/Delhi. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84939789242&doi=10.7135%2fUPO9780857286550&partnerID=40&md5=32618c3ba9b7101853ea357f86de2703 . 10.7135/UPO9780857286550, 2012a; Tausch and Heshmati, Sociologia 44(3):314–347, 2012b), the performance of the Arab countries since the 1960s was mixed at best. The multivariate indicator analysis of the development performance of the countries in the world system along seven different dimensions: Democracy Economic growth Environment ...

How Exceptional Is the West? An Investigation of Worldwide Trends in Societal‐Average Levels of Religiosity, 1981–2020

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