North Africa - The Political Economy of Development and Reform in a Changing Global Economy (Hardcover)

Thirty years after independence, North African countries face a number of local, regional and international difficulties that challenge the power and leadership of local states within the region. Growing contestation against the privileges of state elites, the economic consolidation and growing politicization of migrant communities within the European Union, the failure to create successful regional organizations within North Africa and a powerful backlash against the cultural, political and economic pretensions of once seemingly invincible states has brought the region to the edge of potentially long-term instability.;This book is the first wide-ranging re-evaluation of development in North Africa in almost thirty years. Paying little attention to issues of culture and claims of exceptionalism that have long marked analyses of the region, the majority of the authors in the collection elaborate their arguments about development in the region within a framework of comparative political economy that focuses on issues like the role of power and autonomy of the state, state-society relations, the uniqueness of rentier development and the unique, historiclaly-created relations of sensitivity and vulnerability between North Africa as a peripheral region and its more powerful neighbour, the European Union.