Clement M. Henry

Algeria's Agonies: Oil Rent Effects in a Bunker State

Algeria’s agonies of economic adjustment and chronic civil war are excessive by Mediterranean standards. Algeria would appear to illustrate many of the pernicious effects ascribed to oil rents: a distorted economy, civil strife, and authoritarian government. In much of the literature about oil and other natural resource “curses” political economies suffer from a sort of geological predetermination: mineral wealth is a form of original sin. This paper, while tracing the connections between Algeria’s oil wealth and its slide into the disasters of 1990s, will argue that the original sin was a primitive form of French colonialism, not hydrocarbons. Before the oil revenues took off in the 1970s Algeria’s trajectory was already conditioned by the intensity of the colonial occupation, the trauma of national liberation, the destruction of civil society and political intermediaries, and a lingering identity crisis. The state remained alien, bereft of legitimacy, at best a source of rents for political profiteers. Oil wealth may have compounded Algeria’s difficulties, but the decimation of the country’s intermediaries better explains how the problems arose and why they are so acute today in Algeria compared to neighboring countries. Oil rentier states, if not definitively damned by their wealth, supposedly share certain failings arising from the atrophy of their extractive capacity (Biblawi 1990, Chaudhry 1997, Karl 1997). Blessed with substantial oil revenues, they need not tax their populations as much as other states enjoying similar levels of per capita income. Consequently, the argument goes, they need not be as accountable to their citizenry as the other more extractive states. They enjoy a relative autonomy of sorts, or insulation, so long as the rents keep flowing, from social and political pressures, just as the petroleum industry itself is highly capital intensive and employs few workers and enjoys few other linkages with the broader economy (Mahdavi 1970). Dependence on oil revenues, however, is likely to lead to overspending, debt and fiscal crises because of the volatility of international petroleum markets. Moreover the economy gets distorted with the socalled Dutch disease: times of boom diminish the value of tradable goods relative to real estate and services, leading to a greater dependence on the petroleum revenues and less ability to export other tradable goods (like Dutch tulips, but cf. Ross 1999: 306 who warns us that the theory may not fit poorer labor abundant countries, such as Algeria. See Alan Gelb’s calculations, 1988: 88, 162, 167, showing that Algeria did not really fit the model). When the oil prices tumble, rentier states are in trouble. Civil strife as well as economic hardship may result, and the state, traditionally isolated from social forces,

Neoliberalism in the Middle East and Africa: Divergent Banking Reform Trajectories, 1980s to 2000

This study aims at a better understanding of the politics of economic reform in countries that have remained on the margins of the globalising economy. The article identifies cross-national differences in patterns of financial sector reform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the 1980s and 1990s. We argue that these differences are traceable, in part, to variations in the strength and autonomy of private capital in each country. These social-structural differences are registered, albeit imperfectly, in measures of concentration and ownership structure in the commercial banking sector. Using these measures, we propose a typology of variation in banking structure in the MENA and SSA, and argue that each type tends to be associated with a characteristic pattern of financial sector reform (or non-reform). We find that the biggest struggles over banking reform occurred in countries with a history of antagonistic relations between a relatively strong domestic private sector and the state.

Political Economies of Transition

Tunisia and Syria were among the more preposterous as well as repressive of the region’s authoritarian regimes. Preposterous in Syria as Lisa Wedeen brilliantly illustrated with cartoons and thick descriptions of the cult of Assad (father), inculcating obedience by requiring performances of fealty in which nobody believed.’ Ridiculous in Tunisk for having Ben Ali, a mediocre apparatchik from military intelligence services, not only overthrow the Supreme Warrior Habib Bourguiba but also mimic his personality cult with a narrative that was “peculiar in its naivete.”2 Perhaps, as Kai Hafez has argued, the two regimes were also among the region’s most repressive because each was defending an unpopular secular ideal.3 Whatever the possible similarities, however, this chapter underlines major structural differences between Syria and Tunisia that explain the critical variations not only in their recent political awakenings but also why Egypt, not Syria or Libya, could be Tunisia’s most faithful echo. The big structural difference concerns their respective private sectors and banking systems. Tunisia, like Egypt, had generated substantial, if politically subordinate private sector, from a restructurec socialist economy, whereas Syria, like Libya and Yemen, had consignec theirs, either by design or lack of financial capacity, to the shadows of the informal economy. While the IMF and World Bank had pressured most of these countries to engage in neo-liberal reform, private sector development varied significantly. Tunisian and Egyptian businesses enjoyed considerably more commercial bank financing than the others.

Radical Arab nationalism and political Islam

include a discussion as to how these motivations continue in spite of heavy risks. Participants in polygyny are vulnerable to a lack of state protection and may be subject to arrest, as plural marriage is illegal in the United States. The decision to practice polygyny in spite of these risks should be addressed. While there are two chapters concerning African-American Muslims, the populations that are discussed are largely from the MENA, Turkey, or Iran. This makes it difficult to ascertain whether aspects of marginalisation are salient among Middle Eastern Muslims, or solely among Muslims as a religious group. Absent in these chapters is an investigation of the experiences Southeast Asian Muslims, which may be different from Muslims of Middle Eastern origins. However, this book provides strong research concerning the socio-cultural and socio-economic challenges faced by Muslim groups in Western societies, and is a strong asset to the body of research on this topic.

Algeria modern: from opacity to complexity

being taken on a bizarre kind of parade through Paris at the end of his exile in 1852 (‘La Libération par Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’). At the same time, Bouyerdene strikes a careful balance in demonstrating how the Emir was used by successive French governments while not vilifying the latter with one brush stroke, since many characters appear as genuine sympathisers with his case. In addition, the book presents ‘Abd al-Qādir as deserving of the admiration and awe in which he left his visitors, who often wrote descriptions of their encounters with him. His exchanges with officers, statesmen, journalists, and civilians convey his tenacity in arguing for his case combined with a bewildering stoicism. Although the book’s reliance on archival materials has produced a rich and complex narrative of this chapter in ‘Abd al-Qādir’s life, the omitting of some of the extensive quotations could have allowed for a more compact volume that might have appealed to a larger readership. Despite its length, however, the book certainly will prove accessible to a variety of readers, including both researchers and an interested public. It would have been fascinating to see Bouyerdene engage more with secondary literature (for example, on Orientalism and that kind of exotic presentation of the Emir’s image by the French press). Likewise, a better sense of where the work fits in modern historiography of France could have both made clearer Bouyerdene’s contribution to it and enriched the argument. That said, in many ways the work is in dialogue with these conversations without mentioning them directly. Moreover, this kind of positioning would have made for a very different book. Overall, the book marks an important contribution to both French and Algerian historiography, delving into the little-discussed story of the exile of the Emir in France and tracing the formation of a legend. Bouyerdene has composed an admirably researched and eminently readable history that conveys a sense of the historical injustice of the Emir’s time in exile while at the same time demonstrating from below how that exile was experienced in and shaped by the context of much bigger events in the history of France.

Political Elites in the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa, consisting of most of the Arab League members plus Iran, Israel, and Turkey, are regions of the traditional Muslim homeland that lie closest to Europe and where post-colonial elites were particularly conditioned by the dialectics of emancipation. The more protracted the struggle, the greater the opportunities to forge populations into new nations led by Western educated elites. Conversely, where nationalist agitation was confined to the cities, the military would replace traditional elites after independence in more inclusive political orders. By the 1970s, however, assertions of religious identity would challenge all of the post-colonial regimes, and those with the strongest civil societies, such as Tunisia, stood better chances than the others of weathering the storm of identity politics.

Mémoires. Tome 1: Les contours d’une vie, 1929-1979

these crucial years is unflinching, yet in many respects he is less interested in judging the past than in warning future generations of the dangers of mythologising anti-colonial heroes. In many respects, Ali Yahia is, decades later, Frantz Fanon’s idealised intellectual, as posited in The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004, p. 148), ‘work[ing] away with raging heart and furious mind to renew contact with [his] people’s oldest, inner essence, the furthest removed from colonial times’. One cannot help but notice, of course, that this goal requires Ali Yahia to provide new heroes to represent his Algerian ideal. While students of modern nationalism may cringe at such essentialist claims of ‘true’ culture and national ‘essences’, these categories matter deeply in the multiparty age of identity politics. Ali Yahia acknowledges the power of myth and its complicated relationship to history: ‘Plus que tout autre science, l’Histoire abonde en mythe et légendes. Le souvenir du passé est mythifié et il ne peut y a voir de mythification que si le mythe entretient des souvenirs oraux et écrits’ (31). In this sense his book will be a lasting, divisive and important contribution to the ongoing debate over (and construction of) Algerian national identity.

Combats étudiants pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie: UNEF-UGEMA (1955–1962)/Moments d’histoire des étudiants algériens de Montpellier (1948–2014): Contre l’oubli

diers, shaped as much by a pervasive sense of disconnection from the outside world as by a shared age or sense of solidarity. This theme of isolation extends into Chapter 9, which focuses on the experience of homecoming and the war’s lingering effects on soldiers’ health and psychology, as well as the enduring feelings of guilt, shame, or resentment. Jauffret underscores the heterogeneity of memory as well as experience: the generation of the war, he argues, is ‘one of a multitude of solitudes’ (221). Jauffret’s book offers a welcome counterweight to a literature often focused on the actions and perspectives of military elites, and it will certainly interest historians of decolonisation or postcolonial memory. It also grants historians of postwar France a unique window into the social and cultural turmoil surrounding compulsory military service in the 1950s. The book might have benefitted from a more extended discussion on why experiences of the conflict varied so greatly across region and unit, or whether patterns of shared experience could be detected. Likewise, historians of Algeria may find the discussions of French troops’ interactions with Algerian Muslims a bit brief. That said, several important themes do emerge from the narrative – the pervasive sense of isolation and incomprehension, the traumatic and dehumanising experience of combat, and the deeply-rooted and multiple divides within the contingent – and Jauffret takes care to repeatedly draw readers’ attention to them. Jauffret’s volume makes an important intervention by complicating simple narratives about the motivations and experiences of French soldiers who served in Algeria, and his sensitive and dispassionate treatment of their memories adds to the growing literature on the memory of the war.

Islamic finance in movement: public opinion in the Arab region

Islamic banking has been developing since the mid-1970s in peaceful competition with conventional banking. It has made significant progress in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where Arab Barometer surveys indicate widespread disapproval of interest-based lending and conventional banks in general. This chapter examines this data in order better to understand the characteristics of Islamic finance’s potential clientele. Shariah-compliant financial assets are steadily increasing as a percentage of commercial banking assets across most of the countries in the Muslim world where data is available. Driven by demand from wealthy Gulf investors, Islamic finance has steadily gained market share in many Arab countries, including Syria. Led by Malaysia, it is also gaining traction in Indonesia and other non-Arab countries having Muslim majorities. Even states with Muslim minorities, such as the United Kingdom, have Islamic banks catering to them. The grand total in the world of sharia-compliant financial assets, approaching

The UGEMA generation of Algeria’s civilian leadership

2 trillion, still, however, does not add up to those of a major American or Chinese bank. Although Islamic banking continues to grow more rapidly than conventional banks in most Arab countries, the sceptic may ask whether it really mobilizes new clienteles or simply diversifies the portfolios, as in the Gulf, of wealthy investors. This chapter examines the evidence, focusing on selected under-banked countries where Islamic banking may be attracting new participants and examines Arab survey data to discover the social and political characteristics of the people who might be most attracted to Islamic finance.