Islamic Social Welfare and Political Islam in the Arab World

Many countries in the Arab world, especially the resource-poor countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), have undertaken economic liberalisation programmes over the past ten to twenty years. Often these programmes are supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank through policy-based loans such as stabilisation and structural adjustment loans. In many other regions of the world, especially in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, such programmes which were undertaken in the 1980s and early 1990s, have resulted in a decline in social welfare (Cornia, Jolly and Stewart 1987, Mosley, Harrigan and Toye 1995). This book explores the trends in social welfare in four countries in the MENA region which have undertaken extensive economic liberalisation programmes under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank, namely, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, to see whether economic liberalisation has been associated with a decline in social welfare. These countries were chosen not just because of their prolonged adjustment efforts, but also because they are often put forward by the international financial institutions as cases of successful reformers, with regimes in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia generally perceived as the ‘most advanced’ and ‘successful reformers’ in the region (Shafiq 1998 p. 8), ‘good pupils of the IMF’ who followed its ‘commandments religiously’ (Pfeifer 1996 p. 40).