Author Description

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region registered relatively rapid economic growth, extreme poverty rates declined and inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient was lower than the average for middle-income countries and, in most cases, declining. Yet, starting in 2010, the region had revolutions in four countries--Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen--and widespread protests in several others. This book attempts to shed light on these paradoxical and tumultuous events by focusing on four countries, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Based on the Systematic Country Diagnostics (SCD)--an analysis of the constraints to inclusive growth--for these countries, the volume shows first that lurking behind the achievements up to 2010 were serious economic and social problems. Growth, while high, was volatile. Although childhood diseases had been eliminated and everyone went to school, the quality of public education and health services was extremely low. And while inequality may have been low, the MENA region had the highest unemployment rate in the world, with rates for young people and women double the average. The middle class in particular were suffering from the lack of formal-sector jobs. But the SCDs of the four countries reveal that these factors were only the proximate causes of the discontent and unrest in the Arab world. Underlying them was a failure of governance that manifested itself in different ways in the four countries.