Adam Hanieh

Diversification by Urbanization: Tracing the Property‐Finance Nexus in Dubai and the Gulf

This article explores the role of liberalized real estate markets in shaping financial-sector development in the Arab Gulf region. Since 2001, record oil revenues and the inflow of repatriated wealth into the region have generated immense demand for new, productive destinations for surplus capital. Gulf Cooperation Council states have subsequently undergone rapid growth that is intimately tied to the regulatory transformation of urban real estate markets and the circulation of surplus capital from oil rents to the ‘secondary circuit’ of the built environment. With an emphasis on the city of Dubai, we employ the notion of diversification by urbanization to trace the re-regulation of real estate markets and highlight how these strategies have subsequently shaped Gulf financial markets. Through an examination of the impacts of real estate mega-project development on local banking credit, equities and Islamic financial markets, we reframe recent urbanization in the region as a process of financial re-engineering, and identify the emergence of capital groups whose accumulation activities are tightly connected to both the real estate and financial circuit.

Shifting Priorities or Business as Usual? Continuity and Change in the post-2011 IMF and World Bank Engagement with Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt

Following the popular uprisings that erupted across North Africa in 2010 and 2011, international financial institutions have embarked on a significant re-engagement with governments in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. New lending arrangements and project initiatives by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in particular, have emphasised a supposed turn towards pro-poor policies, social inclusion and public engagement with economic decision-making. This article analyses the content and logic of IMF and World Bank lending to these three countries, examining whether this re-engagement represents a substantive shift away from the neoliberal policies that characterised pre-2011 IFI relationships with the region.

The internationalisation of Gulf capital and Palestinian class formation

The internationalisation of Gulf capital throughout the economies of the Middle East has been a striking feature of regional capitalist development over the last two decades. This article traces the nature of Palestinian class formation in light of this trend (drawing empirically on 2006-2007 data), arguing that a full understanding of capitalism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip needs to integrate the internationalisation of Gulf capital with the exigencies of Israel’s occupation. The theoretical and political implications of this are discussed in light of the projection of both US and Israeli power in the Middle East.

Who's been left behind? Why sustainable development goals fail the Arab world

1–5 Evidence of persistent infectious disease in low-income and middle-income Arab countries exists, alongside increased prevalence of non-communicable diseases in all Arab countries, 6,7 high out-of-pocket health expenditure, 8 poor access to safe water, as well as violent confl ict, persistent foreign interventions, and high levels of social and political fragmentation that result in weak health systems and diminished rights to health. 9 Two sets of indicators, with important implications for health and development, are strikingly extreme in the Arab region (appendix). First, the Arab world has ten times the per person world average number of refugees and, in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the highest number of international migrant workers as a percentage of the population at more than ten times the world average. Second, the Arab world has high levels of militarisation, with weapons imports per person at more than four times the world average. Additionally, the Arab world has the lowest ratios of health to military expenditures at less than one-fi fth of the world average.

Khaleeji -Capital: Class-Formation and Regional Integration in the Middle-East Gulf

The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) are most typically understood from the perspective of their position as the worlds key oil- and gas-producing states. This essay explores the largely overlooked processes of class-formation in the GCC, and argues that very profound tendencies of capital-internationalisation are occurring alongside Gulf regional integration. The circuits of capital are increasingly cast at the pan-Gulf scale, and a capitalist class – described as khaleeji-capital – is emerging around the accumulation-opportunities presented within the new regional space. The formation of khaleeji -capital represents the development of a class increasingly aligned with the interests of imperialism and has important ramifications for understanding the regions political economy.

Hierarchies of a Global Market: The South and the Economic Crisis

The forum article by Adam Hanieh considers the impact of the crisis on the global South. Noting that most commentators have focused on the advanced capitalist core, Hanieh asks us to recall that, historically, crises in the core have been displaced to the periphery. Since the 1980s, the world market has evolved into a hierarchically layered global system into which countries of the Global South are linked through their role as low-wage manufacturing zones, suppliers of migrant labour, exporters of raw commodities, or a combination of the three. Historicizing the global economic system helps us to understand the implications of the crisis for states in the South.