Since the first revolts erupted in the region, economists in Executive’s research department have been busy number crunching, running regressions and trying to find correlations between raw economic data and current events.
In doing so, an interesting observation stood out: the first serious uprisings were in many ways a response to the recent economic liberalization measures undertaken in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Regimes across the region began introducing policy reforms in the last decade — some to try and save themselves from the winds of change that blew in following the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, others to show that they were in line with global trends.
Although the reforms were welcome, their implementation was a reminder that everything we learned in “Economics in developing countries 101” was correct. The people in power and their nepotistic benefactors were already rich from milking the resources of their countries and monopolizing the main productive sectors; by the time the reforms were implemented, decades of bad policy prevented the people from benefiting from the new open systems. With the absence of human development programs and resources, they were shut out from the economic growth that followed.
But one good thing happened, and it has manifested itself in recent events; with more openness came more information, especially through the Internet. People became more aware of their social and economic situation. They caught the scent of what was preventing them from achieving their potential. Entrepreneurs empowered with ambition began to chip away at the barriers of red tape, bureaucracy and corruption standing in the way of their self-realization.
This year they saw an opportunity, and they seized it.
