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This chapter discusses whether and to what extent the internal political changes unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 have triggered a shift in the subsystem’s regional order and its institutions. Drawing on the English School and constructivist theories of International Relations, it firstly discusses the impact of the Arab Spring on the ‘constitutional structure’ of the regional order. Next, it examines if we have witnessed a change in some of the fundamental institutions in place in the MENA region (alliances and amity/enmity cleavages, non-intervention, multilateralism and bilateralism, and great power management). It argues that slight changes in the fundamental institutions since the Arab Spring generally respond to a more fundamental systemic change that took place in the context of the 2003 war in Iraq. However, despite attempts to challenge it, the constitutional structure of the regional order remains intact.

The significant youth population of the Middle East and North Africa region represents a contemporary manifestation of the region’s historic demographic transition. Unfolding in the decades since World War II, this transition, characterized by unevenly falling mortality and fertility rates and rapid population growth, supported the formation of a regional youth bulge. With the growth of the youth bulge, pressures built in the region’s schools and labor markets. Entering adulthood in this context, many youth have faced daunting challenges to their full participation in society due to delays in employment, marriage, and family formation. Moreover, the story of this transition and the experiences of youth in it are an important contribution to our understanding of the factors that led to the uprisings of 2011.

The countries of the Middle East and North Africa vary considerably in the rigidity of their labor regulations. This chapter draws on two different analyses based on the responses of surveys of firm managers in the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys, one using separate country studies for Egypt and Morocco and the other drawing on a larger set of countries from around the world, to a question about changes in employment if regulations were removed. The responses from the Egyptian and Moroccan surveys demonstrate that deregulation of labor could result in more dismissals than hires, at least in the short run. On the other hand the cross-country results suggest that substantial increases in employment might result from the deregulation of labor laws. Since around the world rigid labor laws are generally believed to disadvantage young workers relative to others, labor reforms in those Middle Eastern and North African countries with more rigid labor laws like, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia could reduce youth unemployment.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region provides a classic illustration of how energy injustice cannot be separated from other social ills, such as conflicts, political instability, social exclusions, and extreme vulnerability to climate change. The MENA region is home to some of the world’s highest exporters of oil and natural gas. However, despite its vast oil and gas reserves, it is also home to a significant portion of the world’s energy-poorest people. About 65 million of 214.8 million living in the region have no access to electricity, while an additional 60 million suffer from prolonged power outages and undersupply. This chapter examines the divergent dimensions of energy poverty in the MENA region. It discusses law and governance innovations for promoting the availability, affordability, and accessibility of sustainable energy, especially electricity and modern fuels, across the region.

This chapter introduces the salient arguments that are found throughout the book and describes the interconnections between demography, economics, and policy that help one to understand the dynamics of the Arab Spring. The introduction sets the framework for understanding the various political-economic approaches included. Specifically, using a microeconomic rational decisionmaker approach, the early chapters first set the stage by explaining the socioeconomic conditions of youth in the Middle East and North Africa. Later chapters explain how these socioeconomic conditions can be linked to the youth rebellions. The final chapters conduct policy analysis to enable better understanding of what sorts of policies could help ameliorate both the conditions that led to the Arab Spring and the continuing challenges that post–Arab Spring regimes will face.

This chapter reviews growth and equity in accumulation of human capital in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from a particular perspective in which families and states interact to educate the next generation. The chapter considers two dimensions of human capital, its quantity (years of schooling or attainment) and quality (achievement or learning). It is argued that the education policies of the MENA states have succeeded in raising attainment but not in improving learning. Average families, for their part, have shifted their resources from supporting high fertility to raising more educated children. The implication of the two actors’ differential roles in providing quantity and quality of education in the MENA region is discussed, and it is argued that the increasing importance of family resources has contributed to a high level of inequality of opportunity. To combat rising inequality in education, state policies must focus on leveling the playing field for education.

This chapter argues that the EU’s response(s) to the Arab Spring can be best described as hybrid and is (are) closely reflective of the very hybridity of the EU’s international identity. On the one hand, despite genuine normative impetuses, a largely realist approach and exclusive identities and roles prevailed in crisis management and short-term reactions driven by intergovernmental decision-making. The EU’s crisis management responses are examined in the cases of three different groups of Arab countries – those having witnessed regime change, civil conflict and regime resilience. On the other hand, a more liberal outlook and inclusive identities and roles were embodied in strategic or long-term responses in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy, although the latter’s inherent contradictions and lack of innovation in relation to past policies eventually deprived them of the value-based and progressive effect envisaged on paper. Finally, the EU returned to crisis mode in managing the Syrian refugee inflow that was framed as a ‘crisis’ and took the ‘fortress Europe’ identity to its utmost degree from 2015 onwards.

This chapter analyses president Obama’s foreign policy in the MENA region. The first section focuses on the discourse and key strategic documents of the Obama administration. The purpose is to identify the place that the MENA region has in the order of priorities of his foreign policy. The second section analyses the US foreign policy towards some of the states affected by the Arab Spring; while the third analyses the participation of the US in various conflicts that have marked this change process. The fourth explores the question of the nuclear agreement with Iran and its effects on Israel, which is one of the main allies of the US in the region. The final chapter pulls together the conclusions. In some cases the US used diplomatic tools to promote political change; this is the case of Tunisia, Egypt or Yemen. In other cases the American decision-makers defended a status quo policy, such as Bahrain. In the cases of Libya, Syria and Iraq, the US was involved in different military interventions to promote political change or to fight terrorist groups like the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), as a consequence of the Arab Spring. The chapter concludes that the Obama Administration did not have a coherent strategy to the region, offering different reactions to different states with different contexts and interests. Nevertheless, the ascent of the IS and the Russian influence on the region, make that the MENA region retains its strategic and vital role for the American foreign policy.

Cultural values provide a way of understanding consumers’ acceptance or rejection of the way business is conducted, given their culturally-attuned preferences, choices and tastes. Culture has also been shown to affect almost all aspects of business, including transactions between seller and buyer, from how the seller attracts the customer’s attention to the way they negotiate a deal to the moment the transaction is completed. The notion that globalization results in a “universal taste” is no longer an effective promotional element for enticing international customers. Instead, marketers need to customize their products, services and systems to suit the customer’s specific needs. This chapter is to explore two questions: In what ways does culture impact e-commerce and what are the culturally-rooted challenges of conducting e-commerce in the MENA region? The chapter concludes with a set of propositions based on the argument that culture does influence the adoption of e-commerce for MENA consumers.

Within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, a common feature of corporate financial structures is that governments have always been majority owners of many commercial companies. This chapter provides a detailed picture of state ownership in the region. It finds evidence of a decline in the privatization effort in the 2000s. Privatization may be important for the development of institutional ownership, yet, in some cases, it may not be in the best interests of the public, when cronyism is prevalent. In this context, it is important to understand the role of the state in the growth of capital markets in the region, and the efficiency of the overall development model.