Introduction

The onset around 1980 of the current wave of globalisation (defined as increased integration and interdependence of global economies and peoples), along with the end of the cold war, the ensuing dismantling of the former Communist bloc and the on-going transformation of its former members into democratic free-market economies all raised expectations of a similar and long-overdue transformation taking place in the Arab part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Globalisation, it was argued, held the key to transforming all developing countries, including those of MENA, with its unprecedented technological advancements that shrunk time and distance, homogenised cultures and tastes, and turned the world into a global village. Globalisation’s strong neo-liberal economic orientation and policies, the argument continues, implemented mainly in the form of Structural Adjustment Lending Programmes (SALPs) promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in most cases (the main vehicles of globalisation), would not only lead to economic prosperity, but also to political liberalisation. Under globalisation, the orthodox liberal theory and its proponents proselytised, ‘ultimately economic and political liberalism [become] … as inseparable as identical twins’ (Lubeck, 1998, p.294).