 |
| Volume XIV, Winter 2007, Number 4 |
| |
ABSTRACT
The Maghreb's Subordinate Position in the World's Political Economy
|
| |
| Gregory White |
| |
Dr. White is professor of political science in the Department of Government at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Area studies and geostrategic conventions have shaped a longstanding tendency to think of the world as regional blocs. Yet, in the context of regional studies, analysts typically focus on individual country cases. They often offer country comparisons within a region; at other times, they brave cross-regional contrasts. Such approaches certainly have merit in reaffirming the central importance of choices made by policy makers and challenging a structuralist tendency to dismiss country-level specificities. They can also offer valuable insights into the character of dynamic change within countries.
Nonetheless, a country-level, statist approach remains problematic in the context of Maghrebi political economy. Certainly, there are important differences among Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Respective leaders have made widely divergent policy choices in the post-independence era that have gone far to shape different development performances. Yet rather than offering a country-by-country treatment of Maghrebi political economy, this article endeavors, in the spirit of Katzenstein's World of Regions, to examine the region writ large. It combines a regionwide approach with a sectoral focus to understanding the Maghreb's situation in the international political economy. Such a preoccupation with economic sectors not only facilitates a nuanced understanding of Maghrebi political economy; it also goes far toward reaffirming the crucial and central political-economy connections between the Maghreb and broader geographical spaces: the Mediterranean Basin (including its European and Mashreqi spheres), the Persian Gulf, sub-Saharan Africa and the North Atlantic. Such connections have prompted an ongoing and changing "asymmetrical interdependence" between the Maghreb and other regions. This is evident in the natural-gas pipelines that connect Algeria to Spain or Italy (via Morocco and Tunisia, respectively); the European and North American tourists who travel to historical and architectural sites or sunny beaches; the challenges posed to vulnerable textile sectors by the expiration of the Multifiber Arrangement in 2004; and the trade agreements signed over the decades with the European Union and, in recent years, the United States and other actors. In some instances, the asymmetries have profound security implications; for example, Libya's decision in 2003 to renounce its weapons program was made, in significant part, in return for trade agreements and foreign investment.
|
| |
|
