- Political Economy of the Middle East

Catalog description

A study of the general features of the economic development experience of the Middle East and North Africa. We will study the structural transformation of these economies and the dynamics of their colonial and post-colonial structures. This course examines the different stages of economic development starting with the early post-colonial period, followed by the period of import substitution industrialization of the 1960s, export-led growth of the 1970s, the debt crisis of the 1980s, the structural adjustment programs of the 1990s, and the Arab uprisings of 2011. We will examine the political economy of the region as it relates to unemployment, poverty, inequality, migration, food insecurity, water stress, climate change, class conflict, gender dynamics, cultural norms, as well as regional and global geopolitical power struggles over the control of key markets such as oil and natural gas.