International Political Economy and the New Middle East

Abstract

Q uestions about the economy were undeniably at the heart of the Arab uprisings. The clearest and most iconic expression of this was relayed in chants demanding "bread, freedom, and social justice" that echoed throughout public squares in the Arab world in 2011. For many in the region, this expression reflected deep frustration with declining living standards, diminished opportunity, corruption, and-ultimately-the organization of the economy by authoritarian regimes. In the months thereafter, many scholars turned their attention toward understanding how economics mattered in the uprisings, raising fascinating questions about the interplay of processes linking the region's economies with that of the international: the effects of globalization, changes in commodity prices, perceptions of inequality, the role of remittances, and the effects of neoliberal reform policies, among others.Inquiries into economic causes also opened a door to challenging questions about the motivations and role of international and regional actors in aiding and, in some cases, containing the political transitions that would follow. The uprisings may have represented a euphoric moment for citizens in the region but, for others, it represented a rupture and threat to their respective interests in the existing regional order. Expressions of support for the uprisings from donor governments and organizations often were suffused with apprehension about the best way to assist emerging and, in some cases, unknown political actors in an enormously fluid political environment. For other actors, that apprehension reflected an explicit fear that new political forces might jeopardize their own commercial and strategic interests in the region.Six years have passed since the uprisings began and it is striking to note how little these questions about the economy and the structure of economic power in the region are discussed by scholars and analysts. The economic centrality of the uprisings was largely ignored and, in some respects, misunderstood by the literature on international political economy (IPE), the subdiscipline of international relations (IR) concerned with questions of power and wealth in the international system. IPE as a field has evolved considerably in the last three decades, embracing different approaches to explore the interaction between politics and economics, states and markets, globalization, multilateral institutions and corporations, and trade, among others. Yet, whereas foundational works in IPE enhanced our understanding of dimensions of the global economy, its engagement with the Middle East has been limited. The region's absence from the conversation of mainstream IPE is particularly striking since 2011.Why does this matter? The consequence of this exclusion is ultimately an incomplete view of the global economy that impairs our ability to understand the complex political and economic changes currently unfolding in the region. The path of recent transitions in the Middle East raises critical questions about the nature of shif...

Varieties of International Influence and the Middle East

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Land grabs reexamined: Gulf Arab agro-commodity chains and spaces of extraction

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Avatars of Eurocentrism in international political economy textbooks: The case of the Middle East and North Africa

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