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Foreword -- List of abbreviations -- Chapter 1. Middle Eastern and North African economies after the "Arab spring" -- Chapter 2. Economic challenges in Arab economies -- Chapter 3. Socio-economic regulation in core Arab economies: Institutional contexts for economic reform -- Chapter 4. Case studies -- Chapter 5. Towards integrated strategies to promote private-sector growth

Abstract
The smart specialization approach has guided regional innovation policies in Europe for roughly a decade. However, the policy practice under the approach has met considerable criticism which suggests the existence of significant gaps between the conceptual level and the level of policy implementation. To explain and understand the reasons for these gaps, this article proposes an institutionalist perspective rooted in neo-institutional sociology. In particular, the article draws on concepts such as ceremony, myth, and isomorphism and argues that such an institutionalist perspective can provide one of several fields of further research on the political economy of regional innovation policy. Pursuing such research is particularly relevant to inform policymaking in the coming years, given the current tendency to re-orient smart specialization towards challenge orientation, directionality, normativity, and sustainability.

Newer approaches of industrial policy that focus on catalytic and facilitating interventions of government have become a rivalling model to neoclassical laissez-faire approaches. Inspired by the success stories of East Asian newly industrialised economies (NIEs), newer approaches advocate a more experimental policy stance. Newer industrial policies, including the concept of the "entrepreneurial state", call upon governments to play a catalytic and facilitating role in increasing innovation and, thus, economic growth. During the past three decades, countries have experimented with some of these new approaches, and so has the European Union (EU). Currently, two major policy frameworks of the EU, Horizon 2020 and smart specialisation, shape the European approach to industrial policy and are gaining in importance for enlargement and neighbourhood countries, too. At the same time, these countries outside the EU have pursued their own experiments in industrial policy. The article argues that to better understand what contributes to the success or failure of industrial policies, learning from experiences made both by the EU and its neighbours is valuable. The article draws conclusions from three countries in the EU's neighbourhood, Israel, Tunisia, and North Macedonia. In particular, the article examines the role EU approaches and programs, such as smart specialisation or Horizon 2020, can play in anchoring more entrepreneurial industrial policies in enlargement and neighbourhood countries and addresses problems to be expected when governments are to engage in policy experimentation.

In the European Union and its neighborhood, regional development has increasingly come to focus on agglomerations during the last three decades. Notably, during the 1990s and early 2000s, clustering was the major policy focus in regional development. Currently, the concept of smart specialization is applied all over the European Union and is attracting interest in the EU's neighborhood. The tourism sector particularly tends to agglomerate regionally and even locally. While there is a large body of literature describing tourism clusters and while tourism features as a priority sector in many regional development strategies such as smart specialization strategies, there is a research gap on policy approaches applying agglomeration-oriented policy concepts to tourism destinations in an institution-sensitive way. This article argues that both cluster policy and smart specialization can be of considerable value for institution-sensitive tourism development, either when adapted to the specificities of the tourism sector or when integrating tourism development into wider, cross-sectoral strategies of regional development. Such a policy can be a valuable tool for local and regional development, provided that policies are designed in an institution-sensitive manner and respond to the particular institutional context prevailing in a tourist destination. The article illustrates some preliminary thoughts for institution-sensitive tourism development through cluster policy and smart specialization in Cyprus, Israel, and Tunisia.

Das Beispiel Tunesien zeigt, welche Rolle Kommunen und andere Gebietskörperschaften unterhalb der nationalen Ebene in der Gestaltung von Regionalpolitik spielen können. Der Abbau interregionaler Entwicklungsunterschiede und die Bekämpfung der Jugendarbeitslosigkeit stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt. Wie kann eine dezentralisierte Regionalpolitik Tunesiens Neuanfang nach dem "arabischen Frühling" unterstützen? (KAS-Auslandsinformationen / SWP)

Cluster policy has become a method of choice for policymakers in many countries. Promoting strong localized industries is an appealing perspective for practitioners, as it can be seen as a way to anchor economic activity in regions in an era of globalization. If cluster policy is successful, it can contribute to the creation of employment and to the initiation of growth processes in urban regions and even in some rural ones. This makes cluster policy an interesting tool for economic policy in developing countries. This article offers some theoretical considerations on the use of cluster policy and presents case studies from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.