Dr. White is professor of political science in the Department of Government at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.1
Area studies and geostrategic conventions have shaped a longstanding tendency to think of the world as regional blocs.
Yet, in the context of regional studies, analysts typically focus on individual country cases. They often offer country comparisons within a region; at other times, they brave cross-regional contrasts. Such approaches certainly have merit in reaffirming the central importance of choices made by policy makers and challenging a structuralist tendency to dismiss country-level specificities.2 They can also offer valuable insights into the character of dynamic change within countries.
Nonetheless, a country-level, statist approach remains problematic in the context of Maghrebi political economy. Certainly, there are important differences among Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Respective leaders have made widely divergent policy choices in the post independence era that have gone far to shape different development performances. Yet rather than offering a country-by-country treatment of Maghrebi political economy, this article endeavors, in the spirit of Katzenstein's World of Regions, to examine the region writ large.3
It combines a region wide approach with a sectoral focus to understanding the Maghreb's situation in the international political economy.4 Such a preoccupation with economic sectors not only facilitates a nuanced understanding of Maghrebi political economy; it also goes far toward reaffirming the crucial and central political economy connections between the Maghreb and broader geographical spaces: the Mediterranean Basin (including its European and Mashreqi spheres), the Persian Gulf, sub-Saharan Africa and the North Atlantic. Such connections have prompted an ongoing and changing "asymmetrical interdependence" between the Maghreb and other regions.5 This is evident in the natural-gas pipelines that connect Algeria to Spain or Italy (via Morocco and Tunisia, respectively); the European and North American tourists who travel to historical and architectural sites or sunny beaches; the challenges posed to vulnerable textile sectors by the expiration of the Multifiber Arrangement in 2004; and the trade agreements signed over the decades with the European Union and, in recent years, the United States and other actors. In some instances, the asymmetries have profound security implications; for example, Libya's decision in 2003 to renounce its weapons program was made, in significant part, in return for trade agreements and foreign investment.6
I argue that the Maghreb's asymmetrical interdependence manifests itself at the sectoral level of the regional political economy. Moreover, this asymmetry has crucial political implications. As Keohane and Nye instruct in Power and Interdependence, asymmetrical interdependence conditions the ongoing "vulnerability" of Maghrebi economies to broader forces well beyond the region's ostensible boundaries. The state or region that is more vulnerable to external forces, as opposed to merely sensitive, is unable to adapt as quickly and will have less power in external relationships. In the end, therefore, "Vulnerability is particularly important for understanding the political structure of interdependence relationships. In a sense, it focuses on which actors are 'the definers of the ceteris paribus clause,' or who can set the rules of the game."7 The Maghreb, in other words, rarely sets the rules of the game. These vulnerabilities, in turn, shape the formation of political coalitions that pressure governments with differing degrees of success; thus, the Maghreb's production profile affects domestic politics directly. It also affects the ever-troubled prospects for regional integration to which actors have aspired in the region for more than 40 years.
In order to make this argument, I first provide a brief overview of the region's political economy in the post-independence era and then turn to a treatment of respective economic sectors: energy, natural resources, industry, services and agriculture. Finally, I deal with additional concerns, especially the role of labor migration in the region's political economy and the prospects for regional integration.
Post-Independence: Constants and Change
Since achieving independence in the 1950s and 1960s from France and Italy, the Maghrebi political economy has experienced sharp asymmetry and imbalance.8 Indeed, it is important to underscore the degree to which this stems from a profound and enduring colonial legacy, a heritage that structured the forms of interaction with the international economy as well as the formation of respective domestic, state-society relations.9 Nonetheless, it would be mistaken to argue that the Maghrebi political economy has exhibited constancy since independence. In fact, dynamism and change have been considerable since the 1950s.
Broadly speaking, the ascendance and ideological acceptance of state-led economic growth held sway throughout the 1960s and much of the 1970s. The preeminence of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) throughout the developing world was evident in the region, ranging from Algeria's profound statism and leading role in the Third World movement and Ben Salah's efforts at collectivization to ISI in Tunisia in the 1960s, Hassan II's statist Moroccanization programs and Qadhafi's control of Libyan oil in the 1970s.10 Again, it would not do to ignore the fundamental institutional and ideological differences among the four countries, but all four reached similar predicaments in their economies by the 1980s, including government financial crises, high debt burdens, severe shortfalls in food security, and violent civil unrest.11 The reasons for their predicaments were complicated, but mention has to be made of declining terms of trade in the international economy, burdensome debt obligations, and inefficiencies of statist enterprises. In turn, with important distinctions to be made, the responses were strikingly uniform: the pursuit of IMF– and World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment programs (with the exception of Libya), encouragement of export-led growth, imposition of austerity measures, enhancement of market-based incentives for agricultural production, and the sale of state-owned firms.
As the region entered the turbulent 1990s with the catastrophic losses and instabilities engendered by the Algerian civil war, as well as uncertainties and instabilities in other Maghrebi countries, the state continued its gradual, uneven retreat from the domestic economy. In part, this was associated with the end of the Cold War, the ongoing emergence of globalization, and, for the Maghreb in particular, the accelerated integration of the European Union.12 By the current decade, therefore, the Maghreb's political economy had changed significantly from the early years of independence. It would not do to argue that there has been a thoroughgoing integration into the international economy. Far from it. And there are certainly profound authoritarian predilections on the part of the region's regimes. Nonetheless, there is now much more of an ideological and policy commitment on the part of regional actors to integration into the world economy, to competition, and to market-based (rather than statist) solutions to the challenges posed by development.13 In the realm of political economy, there is undoubtedly more openness than in the 1960s, and it would certainly be inappropriate to argue "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
At a more specific level, several important trends can be identified since the 1960s. First, there has been a gradual, albeit far from complete, effort to turn away from a reliance on hydrocarbons and phosphates. As the terms of trade declined in the 1980s for the export of natural resources, their centrality to national economies diminished. Certainly, they remain crucial components of the region's political economy, and parastatals still predominate in many instances. For example, Morocco's Cherifian Phosphates Office (OCP) and Cherifian Foreign Trade Office (OCE) have remained in close control of the country's most important export sector. Yet, as discussed below, after prices tumbled in the late 1970s, phosphates and derivative products became much less central to the Moroccan economy and the state's role in the sector less central to the regime's strength.
Hydrocarbons, for their part, certainly remain pivotal to Maghrebi economies and, to be sure, have brought problems associated with the "resource paradox" and the political distortions evident in rentier economies.14 Yet price fluctuations have rendered oil rents an instable and uncertain source of revenue, and the regional economy has endeavored to diversify.
Thus, a second transformation has been the ongoing effort to develop and deepen the region's manufacturing and service sectors. As detailed in subsequent sections, these efforts have sometimes been the outcome of intentional policy initiatives, sometimes the result of externally driven forces such as changing markets and investment patterns. The result is a regional economy somewhat more diversified than at the outset of independence. In particular, the service sectors – communications, construction, banking and tourism – have seen the most dramatic transformation in recent decades. It is in these sectors that Maghrebi governments have emphasized their intention to develop since the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s.
Finally, there has been an ongoing decline in the agricultural sector. The causal dynamics of this decline are difficult to ascertain, especially as other phenomena such as environmental pressures exert profound influences on the agricultural sector. Some of these environmental phenomena are natural, such as erratic annual rainfall, while others are anthropogenic, such as the construction of hydroelectric projects or farming practices that promote soil erosion. Furthermore, urbanization and demographic transitions have wrought structural changes in the regional economy that feedback the agricultural sector's problems. At the same time, a combination of domestic policy choices, such as importing foodstuffs to feed urban populations, coupled with sharp protectionism and export promotion by advanced industrialized trading partners in Europe and North America, have contributed to stressed agricultural sectors.
As argued at the outset, the character of the Maghrebi economy, as well as the degree to which it has changed, can best be seen in sectoral analyses that situate the region in a global context. As Evans writes, "'Development' is no longer just a local trajectory of transformation. It is also defined by the relation between local productive capacity and a changing global array of sectors."15 By donning what Evans calls a "sectoral lens" – an approach compatible with global-commodity chain theory16 – one can better see the character of the Maghreb's asymmetrical relationships with the international economy.
Sectoral Analyses
Energy Sector
The energy sector remains the central sector in the Maghreb. Since the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in Algeria and Libya in the late 1950s, the Maghreb has been a central player in global energy markets. Hydrocarbons remain both a leading source of revenue for the region – in the case of Algeria, it earns 95 percent of its export earnings – as well as the sector that consumes the most investment. To state the obvious, it is also a central sector (especially in Algeria and Libya) in terms of its political weight: it provides the revenues that facilitate the deployment of prebends and formidable patron-client relationships in the Maghrebi political system.17 Specifically, Libya's known oil reserves are estimated at 41.7 billion barrels, the most in all of Africa, followed by Nigeria's 36.2 billion barrels.
Algeria's reserves rank third, an estimated 12 billion barrels. Industry analysts consider these estimates to be low, as both countries remain relatively under-explored.18 As for natural gas, Algeria's 161 trillion cubic feet of reserves place it second behind Nigeria's 189 trillion cubic feet and ahead of Egypt's 58.5 trillion cubic feet and Libya's 53 trillion cubic feet.
The vast bulk of North African energy exports are directed toward the European Union, but the picture is somewhat complicated by Algeria's and Libya's differing relationships with the EU and the United States. The United States imports 37 percent of Algeria's oil, roughly the same amount as the EU at 35 percent. This situation contrasts sharply with the Libyan picture. The EU accounts for more than 90 percent of Libya's oil exports, with Italy consuming the lion's share, followed by Spain and France. U.S. imports of Libyan oil only resumed in June 2004 after a hiatus of two decades. As for natural gas, the EU (and especially Italy) remains the central customer for both Algeria and Libya; other customers further afield are less plausible, given the cost of transporting gas. The export capacity for liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been somewhat well-developed in Algeria; Libya's LNG sector remains largely underdeveloped.
Although a focus on the Maghrebi energy sector inevitably concentrates on the picture within Algeria and Libya and the available national-level data, Tunisia, Morocco and the Western Sahara merit mention. Tunisia's modest reserves of oil and natural gas have enabled it to earn some foreign exchange over the decades, as well as provide for some of its domestic needs. The country has turned to its offshore LNG field in the Gulf of Gabes for most of this domestic production.
Tunisia has also been an obvious central player in the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline. In return for granting access to its territory, the Tunisian government receives royalties in cash or in kind from Italy's Agip and Algeria's Sonatrach, based on the value of the natural gas traversing the pipeline.
Mark Hayes conducted a rigorous study of the trans-Mediterranean pipelines and provided a map displaying those that transect the Mediterranean.19
Morocco has little appreciable hydrocarbon production of its own, although that has not kept international firms from engaging in exploratory efforts for decades. Most of this has been offshore and has only accelerated as deposits have been discovered in Mauritania and the Western Sahara. Morocco's participation in the MaghrebEurope Gas (MEG) pipeline facilitates the provision of energy to its Al-Wahda power project.
One last point should be made regarding the Maghrebi energy sector is recent efforts to integrate the region's electrical grid. The Maghreb Electricity Committee began integration initiatives in the 1990s, a process that has deepened in this decade with the increased participation of European energy ministries. In December 2005, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the EU reached an agreement to fund a study of the regional electricity market within the three countries and how they might integrate into the European electricity market. This has been a key part of the follow-on to the 1995 Barcelona process.22
Minerals
Phosphates have played a crucial role in twentieth-century history, and the Maghreb was certainly a central actor in the drama. Advanced industrialized countries came to rely on the importation of phosphate products, as they are at the heart of munitions production, industrial processes and, as the century proceeded, fertilizers for industrialized agriculture.23 The French colonial authorities rigorously developed Tunisia's and Algeria's phosphate production, but it was the phosphate sector that became central to the Moroccan (and regional) political economy. In 2005, it singlehandedly held one-third of the world phosphate market and continued efforts to solicit foreign direct investment to the sector.24
Despite the commodity's decline in foreign-exchange earnings since its peak in the 1970s, there is no denying its ongoing importance. Consistent with the gradual transformation away from state-led, autocentric growth, Morocco formed a joint partnership with a European consortium, Euro-Maroc-Phosphore (EMAPHOS), in 1996. In addition to involvement by European and North American investors, Asian investment in the Moroccan phosphate sector has become increasingly central in the last 10 years as well. For example, in 1997 a joint venture between Morocco and India was created; Indo
Maroc Phosphore SA (IMACID) produces phosphoric acid between OCP and the Indian venture KK Birla.25 China has also been a significant buyer of phosphates for its burgeoning agricultural sector.
Sinochem Corporation is lined up to buy 800,000 tons for 2007-11.26
Morocco is far and away the central player in world phosphate markets, but Algeria and Tunisia continue to have significant sectors. Indeed, much like the aforementioned electricity sector, there is increasing regional cooperation associated with the phosphate sector. For example, the Cairo-based Arab Fertilizer Association is devoted to developing the capacity of its 13 member countries to produce phosphates and by-products for domestic and international consumption.27
Manufacturing and Industry
It is in manufacturing and industry that the Maghreb's unbalanced relationship with the international economy is most evident; with the general exception of sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb lags behind other world regions. Measured by a wide array of indicators – amount of foreign direct investment, percentage of world merchandise exports or rank in trade – the Maghrebi economy has not diversified well into the industrial sector, and advanced industrialization appears to be ever challenging.
To be sure, consistent with the resource paradox discussed above, Morocco and Tunisia have both experienced greater success than resource-rich Algeria and Libya in developing industry and manufacturing. Yet, in terms of sectoral shares of GDP, Tunisia and Morocco have not grown their manufacturing sector appreciably since the 1970s. Table 1 shows the
Table 1: Structure of Production: Sectoral Shares of GDP in percent28
|
Agriculture |
Industry |
Manufacturing |
Services |
||||||||
1985 |
1995 |
2005 |
1985 |
1995 |
2005 |
1985 |
1995 |
2005 |
1985 |
1995 |
2005 |
|
Algeria |
9 |
10.5 |
8.3 |
53.6 |
50.4 |
62.3 |
13.7 |
11.5 |
5.3 |
37.4 |
39.1 |
29.4 |
Morocco |
16.6 |
14.6 |
13.3 |
33.4 |
32.9 |
31.2 |
18.6 |
18.3 |
16.8 |
49.9 |
52.5 |
55.5 |
Tunisia |
15.8 |
11.4 |
12.6 |
32.7 |
29 |
28.2 |
15.1 |
18.8 |
18.1 |
51.4 |
59.6 |
59.2 |
transformation in key snapshots. Tunisia is the only Maghrebi country to show a growth in the manufacturing and service sector, not a significant jump.
Another useful way to demonstrate the change, or more precisely the relative lack thereof, over the decades is to examine the percentage of total exports given over to manufactured goods. Table 2 provides an overview. Morocco and Tunisia showed some promise in this regard, with manufactures comprising roughly two thirds of their exports. At the same time, their overall export volume was not that high: both countries exported roughly $10 billion in 2005, a figure that pales in comparison to Turkey's nearly $40 billion or Iran's $55 billions of annual exports.
As Table 3 shows, Morocco's increase was coupled with a sharp decrease in the contribution of food to export earnings.
Not surprisingly, Algeria and Libya see very little contribution to exports from the non-fuel sectors.
As Richards and Waterbury argue,31 a useful indicator of industrialization is the percentage of overall economic output that comes from manufacturing, or the volume and growth rate of Manufacturing Value Added (MVA). Here, along with the rest of the Middle East/North African region, the Maghreb is in dire straits. To be sure, the Eastern Mediterranean boasts Turkey and Iran, while the Maghreb's contribution to the growth of MVA has receded since the 1970s. Table 4 shows the percentage growth of MVA during key time periods.
While these are not insignificant figures, the base from which the manufacturing sectors start is very low. For example, while Tunisia's growth of MVA from 1985 to 1992 was 7.5 percent, its total MVA in 1991 was $1.9 billion, which represented only 2.7 percent of MENA's total output in manufacturing.32 Moreover, the bulk of manufacturing activities in the Maghreb remains a in light industry such as textiles, shoes, food processing and tobacco, and not in the more lucrative and competitive advanced-industrial sectors.
Despite the general trend, noted earlier, toward a smaller role for the state in the region's political economy, regional efforts to privatize state-run enterprises in recent decades have proceeded unevenly at best.33 Often they have resulted in high levels of corruption, with secret deals undermining the integrity of the process.
One final point is that the anticipated end of the Multi-Fiber Agreement unleashed the export potential of China and India countries that had experienced lack of access to textile markets for several decades. This development spells trouble for the export competitiveness of Morocco and Tunisia in this sector.34
Table 3: Export Data30
|
Merchandise Exports (million U.S.$) |
Food (% of total) |
Agricultural Productions (% of total) |
Fuels (% of total) |
Ores and Metals (% of total) |
Manufactures (% of total) |
||||||
1990 |
2004 |
1990 |
2004 |
1990 |
2004 |
1990 |
2004 |
1990 |
2004 |
1990 |
2004 |
|
Algeria |
12,930 |
32,298 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
96 |
97 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
2 |
Libya |
13,225 |
20,849 |
1 |
-- |
0 |
-- |
95 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
4 |
-- |
Morocco |
4,265 |
9,739 |
26 |
19 |
3 |
2 |
4 |
2 |
15 |
8 |
52 |
69 |
Tunisia |
3,526 |
9,685 |
11 |
11 |
1 |
1 |
17 |
10 |
2 |
1 |
69 |
78 |
Table 4: Growth of Manufacturing Value Added (%)
Similarly, the Bretton Woods institutions, Washington or Brussels. Often treated as a residual category, the service or tertiary sector is a hugely significant realm that could offer potential growth in the Maghreb. It is the sector to which advanced industrialized countries turned in the late twentieth century in their move away from heavy industry and conventionally includes insurance, banking, retail and tourism.
In general terms, the region's service sectors remain largely underdeveloped. Banking, for example, remains "relatively insulated from international capital markets" despite the structural-adjustment efforts in the 1980s and 1990s.35 Communications and information technology remains largely state-controlled in all of the countries, reflecting political imperatives on the part of the regimes. Morocco has liberalized its communication sector the most and opened itself to investment by Spanish and French firms, with Tunisia following.
Above all, a key component of the region's service sector in recent years is transportation.36 At the same time, it is a complicated economic activity, in that it spans a wide array of different kinds of tourism: mass beach, urban, heritage, adventure, resort, sex, sport and so on.
Analyzing the tourism sector contributes to an understanding of the complex linkages between the local economy and the international arena.37 And, once again, it reveals the character of Maghrebi asymmetry in the international arena.
Morocco and Tunisia have pursued the most aggressive efforts since the 1970s to develop the tourism sector, with Algeria third and Libya a distant fourth. Whereas Tunisia has nurtured standardized mass-beach tourism, Morocco has pursued high-end. In either case, the result has been a steady growth of arrivals. Table 5 shows the numbers of international arrivals and also reveals the consistent average annual growth in the region since 1990. Although the 199091 Gulf War affected tourism across the region, the market rebounded quickly with the end of the Cold War and opening markets.38 Algeria was a sharp exception to the trend during the 1990s because of the dislocations wrought by its civil war.
Similarly, Table 6 shows tourism receipts. Despite Tunisia's greater number of visitors, Morocco earns far more than Tunisia from tourism. Its $4.6 billion represents a full one-fifth of Africa's market share for tourism, surpassed only by South Africa.
The central lesson to take from the emphasis on tourism is its role in the regional economy as a percentage of GDP. In 2000, Morocco's revenues constituted a full 6.1 percent of its GDP, with Tunisia's revenues contributing 7.7 percent of its GDP.42 Such figures will only grow, as both economies (and perhaps Algeria) further emphasize tourism as a development sector. Morocco's 2010 vision is an ambitious plan designed to increase hotel capacity and continue the building of world-class golf courses and other destinations around the country.43 Moreover as Libya opens its economy and seeks to develop destination tours to UNESCO World Heritage sites such as Cyrene or Leptis Magna, it will also likely pursue tourism development as an official policy.
Tourism development comes with a high price tag. One cost is environmental. As coastlines become concretized, or as the hydrological demands of tourist’s spike, governments will be hard-pressed to ensure suitable environmental protection.44 A second concern is in the security dimension. Providing a stable setting for tourists – not to mention avoiding further alienation of local populations that struggle for economic survival or fear the loss of cultural integrity – is a constant challenge for officials. With the ongoing deepening of security imperatives in the Maghreb, including efforts such as the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership,45 the sector may become vulnerable to fluctuations in demand from jittery tourists.
Agriculture
Finally, agriculture remains a central, albeit troubled, sector for the region.
Agrarian societies by tradition, Maghrebi countries enjoyed agro-alimentary self-sufficiency upon independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet complex processes in the post-independence era have led to a loss of such self-sufficiency and the relative decline of agricultural sectors. Policy choices by decision makers, climatic variables, urbanization, availability of cheap imports and protectionism by international
Table 5: International Arrivals (thousands of visitors)39
|
1980 |
1990 |
1995 |
2000 |
2005 |
Average Annual Growth (%) |
|
1990-2000 |
2000-05 |
||||||
Algeria |
-- |
1,137 |
520 |
866 |
1,443 |
-2.7 |
10.8 |
Morocco |
1,425 |
4,024 |
2,602 |
4,278 |
5,843 |
0.6 |
6.4 |
Tunisia |
1,602 |
3,204 |
4,120 |
5,058 |
6,378 |
4.7 |
4.7 |
Table 6: International Tourism Receipts (million US$)40
|
1980 |
1990 |
1995 |
2000 |
2005 |
Market Share in Africa (%)41 |
||
1990 |
2000 |
2005 |
||||||
Algeria |
|
105 |
33 |
96 |
-- |
1.6 |
0.9 |
-- |
Morocco |
397 |
1,259 |
1,296 |
2,039 |
4,617 |
19.7 |
19.4 |
21.4 |
Tunisia |
601 |
948 |
1,530 |
1,683 |
2,063 |
14.8 |
16.0 |
9.6 |
actors have all conspired to challenge agriculture, to say the least.46 While the agricultural sector employs as many as half of all Maghreb is, agriculture's role in the economy (in terms of export earnings and contribution to GDP) is low. In Algeria, as shown in Table 1 above, less than 10 percent of GDP comes from agriculture. It is a sector that has suffered under mismanagement and misplaced visions by policy makers.47 Climatic variations, moreover, continue to bedevil the sector. Decades of chronic drought have threatened it; in 2004 and 2005, drought struck again, affecting harvests. And locusts continue to ravage the region as well.48
In terms of region wide dynamics, the Maghreb is in a vulnerable position vis-àvis Europe and the United States. In the variety of cooperation agreements, association accords and partnerships signed with Europe since the 1960s, agriculture has often remained off the table in negotiations. The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Community (and subsequently EU) provides strong price supports to European exporters and protection from imports. Even promising export sectors such as olive oil, tomatoes, citrus, wine and canned fish products confront protectionism from the EU.49 The recent trade agreement with the United States also does not augur well for Morocco's agriculture sector, as the agreement calls for the gradual opening of Morocco's market to U.S. imports.50
The decline of the agriculture sector has mirrored the region's experience with urbanization since the 1970s. The process is a function both of migration to cities and growing birth rates and clearly has broader implications for relations with Europe.51
Conclusion
A sectoral analysis of the Maghrebi political economy facilitates an understanding of the context for external economic relations. Trade agreements, experiments in regional integration and cooperation, and flows of people, goods and capital throughout the region have to be set in the context of the region's "production profile."52 As the previous overview of the region's economic sectors reveals, the Maghreb's "factor endowments" are sharply constrained.
Part of the regional political economy affected by the Maghreb's uneven development has been its role as a net exporter of labor to Europe and, to a lesser extent, the Machreq. One of the key components of this complex phenomenon is the profound need for remittances. Table 7 reveals the important role that remittances play in the regional economies. Even as the reliability of the available data may be somewhat questionable, Morocco's $4.2 billion in remittance revenue in 2004 dwarfed the countries' earnings in foreign direct investment.
Well beyond the economic role played by remittances, labor migration raises a host of security issues54 that affect local social dynamics,55 multilateral relations56 and the state's ability to craft citizenship.57 How might the Maghreb break out of its asymmetries? One possibility still woefully underdeveloped is the emergence of regional integration. Maghrebi integration has been a dream since the nationalist movements of the independence struggle and certainly since the early 1960s. The Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), founded in February 1989 in Marrakech, has effectively failed in its nearly 20 years of existence, in large part because of the 1991 Gulf War, sanctions against Libya, the
Algerian civil war, and Algerian-Moroccan tensions over the Western Sahara. Still, some recent moves have been made in this direction with respect to trade. The 2004 Agadir Agreement brought together Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt. In other areas, as well, there is good potential for functional cooperation on specific issues such as the aforementioned collaboration on electricity and phosphates.58 Cooperation on tourism infrastructure or, perhaps, transportation may also emerge. Two recent reports, one by the IMF and the other by the World Bank, argue that financial integration itself may be the key to successful integration and that the private sector needs to take the lead.59
Yet the best prospect for reducing the disparities is for a transformation in the broader international economy. One immediate step would be for the advanced industrial countries to reduce export supports for farmers, such those embodied in the 2007 U.S. Omnibus Farm Bill or the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. Tourists traveling to the region might eschew high-end golf tourism because of its substantial hydrological demand. And, in the spirit of "trade not aid," Western economies might also liberalize their imports of light manufactures such as textiles into their otherwise protected markets. These are no small tasks, of course, but the capability to correct an asymmetrical power relationship lies with the more powerful actors. Doing so would be consistent with what Tocqueville called "self-interest rightly understood."
1 The author gratefully acknowledges assistance provided by Chantel Pheiffer.
2 Structuralism in this context ranges from Waltz's structural realism well across the political spectrum to Wallerstein's world systems theory.
3 Peter Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium (Cornell University Press, 2005).
4 Peter Evans, 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton University Press; 1987). The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1979). Political Consequences of the Product Cycle. International Organization Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 1-34; D. Michael Shafer, Winners and Losers: How Sectors Shape the Development Prospects of States (Cornell University Press, 1994).
5 Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Longman, 2000).
6 Dafna Hochman, "Rehabilitating a Rogue: Libya's WMD Reversal and Lessons for US Diplomacy," Parameters Vol., No.36 pp. 63-78; Yahia Zoubir, "The United States and Libya: From Confrontation to Normalization," Middle East Policy, Vol. 13, No. 2, (2006), pp. 48-70.
7 Keohane and Nye, p. 15.
8 Morocco and Tunisia obtained independence from France in 1956 and Algeria negotiated the Evian Accords with France in 1962. Morocco also experienced Spanish colonial control. Formally colonized by Italy from 1911-43, Libya obtained nominal independence from British and French control in 1951; Muammar AlQadhafi led the Free Officers coup against King Idris in 1969.
9 Lisa.Anderson, State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton University Press, 1986); Edmund Burke, "Theorizing the Histories of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Arab Maghrib," in Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture, and Politics, edited by A. A. Ahmida (Palgrave, 2000); John Entelis, Comparative Politics of North Africa (Syracuse University Press, 1980); Clement Henry Moore, Politics in North Africa (Little Brown, 1970); Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya (Cambridge University Press, 2006.)
10 Bradford L. Dillman, State and Private Sector in Algeria: The Politics of Rent-Seeking and Failed Development (Westview, 2000); Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya. Gregory White, On the Outside of Europe Looking In: A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco (State University of New York Press, 2001).
11 Rhys Payne, "Economic Crisis and Policy Reform in the 1980s," in Polity and Society in Contemporary North Africa, edited by I. W. Zartman and W. Habeeb (Westview, 1993).
12 Clement Henry, "The Clash of Globalizations in the Middle East," in The International Relations of the Middle East, edited by L. Faucett. (Oxford University Press 2005); Clement M. Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2001); Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East, 2nd ed. (Westview, 1996).
13 Alain Faujas, "Le grand bond en avant," Jeune Afrique, June 9 2007, pp. 44-48.
14 Eva.Bellin, "The Politics of Profit in Tunisia: Utility of the Rentier Paradigm?" World Development Vol. 22 1994. No.3: pp. 427-436; Terry Lynn Karl,. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-State (University of California Press, 1997); Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya.
15 Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. (Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 8.
16 Gary Gereffi, Miguel Korzeniewicz and Roberto P. Korzeniewicz (eds.), Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Praeger Publishers, 1994).
17 Lisa Anderson, "The State in the Middle East and North Africa, " Comparative Politics, Vol.20 (1987), No.1: pp. 1-18; Richard A. Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1987); Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya.
18 Data on hydrocarbons is taken from the Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, at www.eia.doe.gov.
19 Mark Hayes, "Algerian Gas to Europe: The Transmed Pipeline and Early Spanish Gas Import Projects" (Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, 2004).
20 See, for example, the Association for the Support of a Free and Fair Referendum in the Western Sahara www.arso.org.
21 See U.S. Department of Energy analysis at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Arab_Maghreb_Union.
22 Haizam Amirah Fernández and Richard Youngs, eds., The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: Assessing the First Decade (Barcelona: Fundación para las realaciones internacionales y el dialogo exterior, 2005); Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig, "Relations with the Wider Europe," Journal of Common Market Studies Annual Review, 44, 2006.
23 John Robert McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Norton, 2001).
24 Omayra Bermúdez-Lugo, "The Mineral Industries of Morocco and Western Sahara" (Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey, 2007).
25 See www.OCPgroup.ma.
26 Abashi Shamamba, "Ces entreprises chinoises qui gagnent au Maroc," L'Economiste, April 24, 2006.
27 See www.afa.com.
28 Adapted from World Bank data in Richards and Waterbury (1996, p63) and data available from the World Bank at devdata.worldbank.org. Data for Libya is unavailable.
29 From devdata.worldbank.org. Data for Libya is unavailable.
30 World Bank, World Development Indicators on CD-Rom, 2007.
31 Richards and Waterbury A Political Economy of the Middle East. 2nd ed. (Westview, 1996), p. 65.
32 Ibid., p. 66.
33 Henry and Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East.
34 World Bank, 2006.
35 Henry and Springborg. Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, p. 51.
36 Waleed Hazbun, "Globalzsation, Reterritorialisation and the Political Economy of the Tourism Development in the Middle East," Geopolitics Vol.9, No.2, 2004, pp. 310-41.
37 Michael Clancy, "Commodity Chains, Services and Development: Theory and Preliminary Evidence from the Tourism Industry," Review of International Political Economy, Vol.5, No.1 (1998), pp. 122-148.
38 Hazbun, "Globalization, Reterritorialisation," p. 326.
39 Data available from the UN World Tourism Organization database, available at www.world-tourism.org.
40 Ibid.
41 The UNWTO considers the Maghreb to be part of Africa; there is no data available for Libya.
42 Hazbun, "Globalization, Reterritorialization," p. 326.
43 See http://www.visitmorocco.org.
44 Mohamed Berriane, "Environmental Impacts of Tourism along the Moroccan Coast" in The North African Environment at Risk, edited by W. D. Swearingen and A. Bencherifa (Westview, 1996.)
45 Lianne Kennedy Boudali, The North Africa Project: The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, (The Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy, 2007).
46 Najib Akesbi, "Accord de libre-échange Maroc-États-Unis: un volet agricole lourd de conséquences "
Région et Développement Vol.23, (2006).
47 Azzedine Layachi, "Domestic and International Constraints of Economic Adjustment in Algeria," in The New Global Economy: North African Responses, edited by D. Vandewalle (St. Martin's Press, 1996); Will D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912-1986 (Princeton University Press, 1987).
48 Martin Enserink, "Entomology: Can the War on Locusts Be Won? " Science, Vol.306 (5703), (2004), pp. 1880-82.
49 Gregory White, "Too Many Boats and Not Enough Fish: The Political Economy of Morocco's 1995 Fishing Accord with the European Union, " Journal of Developing Areas Vol.3, (1997), pp. 316-336; Gregory White, On the Outside of Europe Looking In: A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco (State University of New York Press, 2001).
50 Jean F. Crombois, "The US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement," Mediterranean Politics Vol.10, No.2, (2005) pp. 219-223; Gregory White, "Free Trade as a Strategic Instrument in the War on Terror? The 2004 U.S.Moroccan Free Trade Agreement," Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No.4, (2005).
51 Ayman Zohry, Migration Without Borders: North Africa as a Reserve of Cheap Labour for Europe. (Paris: UNESCO, 2005).
52 Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises
(Cornell University Press, 1986).
53 World Development Indicators.
54 Gregory White, "Sovereignty and International Labor Migration: The Security Mentality in Spanish-Moroccan Relations as an Assertion of Sovereignty," Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 14, No.4 (2007), pp. 690-718.
55 Hafidha Chekir, "Discrimination et femmes maghrébines migrantes" Paper read at Le Maghreb et les nouvelles configurations migratoires internationales: mobilités et réseaux, at Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Sousse, October 2002.
56 Hassen Boubakri, "Transit Migration Between Tunisia, Libya, and Sub-Saharan Africa," study based on greater Tunis. Paper read at Council of Europe Regional Conference on Migrants in Transit Countries, Istanbul, September 30, 2004.
57 Laurie Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
58 Ernst Haas, "International Integration: The European and the Universal Process," in European Integration, edited by M. Hodges (Penguin Books, 1972).
59 Anós Casero Paloma and Ganesh Kumar Seshan, "Is There a New Vision for Maghreb Economic Integration?" edited by Social and Economic Development Group Middle East and North Africa Region: World Bank, 2006; Amor Tahari, , Patricia Brenner, Erik De Vrijer, Marina Moretti, Abdelhak Senhadji, Gabriel Sensenbrenner, and Juan Solé, "Financial Sector Reforms and Prospects for Financial Integration in Maghreb Countries," edited by Middle East and Central Asia Department and Monetary and Capital Markets Department: International Monetary Fund, 2007.
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