Suchergebnisse

Reviewed: The Gulf Region: Economic Development and Diversification (4 vols.), ed. by Giaccomo Luciani, Steffen Hertog, Eckart Woertz, and Richard Youngs. Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2012. ; Resources Blessed: Diversification and the Gulf Development Model (Vol. 1), ed. by Giacomo Luciani. ; National Employment, Migration and Education in the GCC (Vol. 2), ed. by Steffen Hertog. ; GCC Financial Markets: The World's New Money Centers (Vol. 3), ed. by Eckert Woertz. ; The GCC in the Global Economy (Vol. 4), ed. by Richard Youngs. ; The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/67.2.3 ; Giacomo Luciani, the senior editor of this four volume set, along with Hazem Beblawi laid the conceptual foundations for Arab rentier states a quarter of a century ago.1 He and his team of some 40 researchers have now revisited this concept as part of a broader effort to describe and analyze the political economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The very title of the flagship volume edited by Luciani, Resources Blessed: Diversification and the Gulf Development Model, suggests revision to the prevailing, Luciani-influenced orthodoxy that the resource curse and its attendant rentierism are inherently inconsistent with economic diversification and development. Revisionism implied by the title is indeed borne out as the editor and authors present a largely positive account of the economic accomplishments and future of the GCC states, distancing themselves, sometimes explicitly, not only from negative prognostications for rentier states, but even from the present applicability of the concept itself to the "mothers" of all rentier states, those that comprise the GCC.

Middle East militaries can be arrayed along a continuum from more to less involvement in national economies, albeit with a few outliers. At the maximum engagement end are Egypt and Iran. In both countries, as in Pakistan, one can reasonably refer to the existence of a "Military, Inc." The Egyptian Ministry of Defense and its subordinate Ministry of Military Production preside over a sprawling economic empire that directly owns companies active in the industrial, agricultural, construction, telecommunications, and service sectors. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps presides over a similar economic empire that has particularly strong positions in the oil field service, construction, port operation, and media and telecommunications sectors. Both countries also have what might be described as parallel "officer economies." These have come into existence as a result of officers, many of them retired, capitalizing on their regime connections by gaining ownership of privatized state-owned enterprises or by forming companies that thrive on state contracts. These two military economies are subject neither to the effective oversight of legislative or nonmilitary executive authority nor to the scrutiny of civil society, including the media. Both provide essential patronage resources to ensure the loyalty of their officer corps. And in both countries, military preparedness and overall capacities suffer as a result of preoccupation with the management of and benefits from military economies.

"Ließen sich Ressourcen direkt in Wohlstand übersetzen, wäre Ägypten ein wohlhabendes Land. Jahrzehnte der Misswirtschaft und ausbleibender Reformen aber vertieften die strukturellen ökonomischen Probleme. Soll der politische Umbruch gelingen, muss er mit wirtschaftlichem Erfolg einhergehen. Und den könnte das Militär behindern." (Autorenreferat)

"Intended by the Bush Administration to be a 'beacon for democracy in the Middle East', various empirical measures of democratization reinforce the interpretation that Iraq's democratic beacon casts a dim light indeed. The bedrock indicator of democracy is change of government through a free and fair election. Iraq has yet to meet that standard. Iraq also lacks a firm constitutional base upon which a democracy might be built. Another measure of and precondition for democracy is rule of law and the protection of human, civil and political rights associated with it, and by this measure the current government in Iraq is also deficient. A closely related condition of democracy is institutionalized civilian oversight and control of the armed forces, typically exercised by parliaments, civil society, the media, and the executive branch itself. Such oversight and control is absent. Iraqi public opinion both reflects the absence of democracy and is an obstacle to it. A final correlate and even pre-condition for democracy is national sovereignty. In the case of Iraq, that sovereignty is severely attenuated." (author's abstract)