Assessing Intra-Arab Trade Integration and Potential: Evidence from the Stochastic Frontier Gravity Model

Western Domination, Destructive Governance, and the Perpetual Development Crisis in the Arab Region

“…Comprehensive development of backward countries needs commitment and engagement from the state and requires a genuine political force that is attentive to all aspects of the process. This force is absent in the Arab region, which appears in the Arab kleptocracy choices that led to a lack of industrialization, underinvestment in infrastructure, human capital, science and technology, the absence of national security strategies regarding food, medicine, and defense, and in the lack of efforts toward an Arab economic regional integration, whose substantial benefits are evident as proven by Neaime (2019) and Ebaidalla and Mustafa (2018). This apathy toward comprehensive economic integration and the desire to keep high borders between the Arab satellite states is because the ruling Arab elites have a natural disinterest in sharing their dominion with other ruling elites in the region, besides the proclivity to keep the status quo of a regional disintegration in order to appease their Western masters who grant and renew the legitimacy of their rule.…”