Can trade be a lever for reforms in the Middle East?
Can trade be a lever for reforms in the Middle East? Testimony by David L. Mack in Hearings of the US Senate Finance Committee, published by the Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, in a two-part series on 27-28 May 2004 By David L. Mack* Israel, despite shortcomings in its economic system and the disincentives to private investment following decades of political turmoil and violence, is firmly embedded in the global economy and, since the 1960s, has multiplied its per-capita income many times over. By contrast, most of the Arab countries and Iran are still textbook cases of stagnating or only slowly growing economies. My focus will be on the relationships between governments and their economies, a relationship which often serves to retard meaningful foreign trade, and the extent to which governments can do anything positive. There is often a nexus of relationships between government elites and a relatively few commercial family empires that dominate economic activity and hamper the emergence
