Abstract

Despite vast financial wealth, the Arab economy failed to develop. In fact, Arab economies came to represent cases of reverse development or “de-development”. Of the two paths of capital accumulation — accumulation by market expansion or commodity realisation and accumulation by encroachment— the Arab world appears to fall principally  subject to the diktat of the latter process. A tight cross-border alliance between Western elites and Arab regimes has long been at play, to support a process that undermines development and that draws resources out of this region. In this lecture, which draws on his ongoing research, Dr Kadri traced the developmental experience of the Arab world and attempted to explain its setbacks in terms of anti-labour institutional bias combined with an inadequate policy framework.