Trade, Security, And Neoliberal Policies: Where Are The Reforms In Arab Countries Going?

24 May 2018. From 18:30 | Workshop | English | IEMed, Barcelona

The reforms that North African regimes have implemented from the 1990s to the present, especially in Morocco and Tunisia, neither generate general economic growth nor expand social justice or contribute to economic liberalization.

In Morocco and Tunisia, in recent decades, as “Keynesian” economies, more or less state-run, have moved on to rapid processes of globalization that include the partial liberalization of some basic public services. Neoliberal reforms that increase social instability as they increase the “economic gap between rich and poor”. As a result, a greater climate of unrest and authoritarian and repressive reactions by governments is forecast. Proof of this are the social mobilizations that have been registered in Tunisia or Morocco in 2018. The reason is simple: democratically elected governments fail to “give the people what they want.” And in fact, “while the debates focus on political institutions and elites, we will miss the dynamic of change that citizens across the region are driving.”

Sami Zemni analyzes reforms by international agencies and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the European Union itself; and its relationship to the wave of popular uprisings and revolutions that took place in the Arab world seven years ago now.