Globalisation, International Finance and Economic Reform in the Arab World

Globalisation is today’s buzzword and is the driving force behind international economic relations. Although its reach has so far been uneven, it continues its ‘encroachment’ across developing regions, including ‘the Arab World’1 (Ayubi 1995a pp.7–8). While the globalisation process, or al-awlamah in Arabic, has been much debated and analysed, the analysis remains less than global, and limited in its focus on the rich part of the globe. As Mittelman (2000) put it: ‘Globalisation studies are not really global. Rather globalisation research mainly centres on, and emanates from, the OECD countries … from Western intellectual traditions and practices.’ Only the Asian continent has recently received sufficient attention in this regard, as a result of the financial crisis that hit the region in 1997–98 and focused worldwide attention on the possible negative socio-economic impact of premature globalisation.2 Globalisation studies emanating from and centring on the Arab world remain limited, carried out mostly by officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, or other ‘members of an elite — a minister of finance or the head of the central bank — with whom the Fund [World Bank or World Trade Organisation] might have a meaningful dialogue’ (Stiglitz 2002 p.41). Therefore, these studies appeared blindly pro-globalisation, a fact which led them to magnify the benefits and underestimate the political and other non-economic costs of globalisation. As such, they are largely devoid of any political analysis.