Iván Martín

Algeria's political economy (1999–2002): an economic solution to the crisis?

This article provides a detailed critical analysis of the economic policy implemented by the Algerian governments between 1999 and 2002 (under the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika), of its results, and of the advance of their structural reforms programme. In this context, the social base of these reforms and the degree of social and political consensus about them are considered. Finally, the article reviews the principal aspects of economic policy that will determine how far this policy will contribute to offering a solution to the serious crisis that Algeria has been undergoing since 1988 and to deactivating the risk of social instability that haunts the country: the issue of employment, the creation of a free trade area with the European Union and its impact, the role of the private sector and export diversification, foreign investment, and the regulation of the nations principal economic sector, the hydrocarbon sector. Within this framework, the matter of the viability of the reforms is raised, in a country dominated by the informal economy and the circuits for rent appropriation and realisation that are parallel to the market, as well as the matter of the interaction between economic reform and political reform.

Morocco Wakes up to Human Development

The terrorist attacks which hit Casablanca on 16 May 2004, the work of radical Islamists coming from the slums that proliferate at the fringes of the town, marked a turning point in Morocco’s economic and social policy priorities, giving way to a much stronger emphasis on the population’s living conditions and human development as the leading principle of national public policies. The first reaction of the authorities in this direction was the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) launched in May 2005 as a new programme aiming to articulate all state action and investment in the social sector throughout the country. Then the allencompassing ‘50 Years of Human Development and Prospects for 2025’ Report (‘Fiftieth Anniversary Report’), published in January 2006, undertook a thorough evaluation of 50 years of independence from a human development perspective. Like all major government initiatives in Morocco, the INDH was announced in a royal speech on 18 May 2005, in which King Mohamed VI acknowledged that social problems were ‘the main challenge we must face to achieve our project for society and development’. He said that, based on ‘objective data . . . large segments of Morocco’s population and entire areas of the country live in conditions . . . of poverty and marginalization incompatible with a dignified decent life’. He expressly mentioned urban slums, illiteracy, low levels of school attendance, unemployment and exclusion, and assumed the state’s responsibility to undertake ‘social modernization’ through integrated public policies, while acknowledging ‘the importance of public participation to ensure the suitability and feasibility of the projects . . . building on the dynamism of the network of associations and of local development agents’. The three focal points of the INDH identified in the king’s speech were: (1) to reduce the social deficit (both urban and rural) through better access to basic infrastructure and social services such as ‘health, education, literacy, water, electricity, healthy housing, sewage systems, highway systems, mosques, youth centres and cultural and sports infrastructure’; (2) to promote income-generating activities and employment; and (3) to

Economic and Social Rights in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: The missing link - Introduction

The advance of economic and social rights, both in their legal and economic sense, epitomizes the very process of development of peoples and nations. As conceptualized by Amartya Sen as part of the general notion of freedom, they are both the primary end and the principal means of development. However, although they should be clearly at the core of any true development endeavour, be it national or international, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to them in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership initiated in the Barcelona Conference in November 1995, between the European Union (EU) and 12 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (Mediterranean Partner Countries, MPCs). The Partnership is purportedly a co-operation framework aimed (according to the Barcelona Declaration) at ‘turning the Mediterranean basin into an area of dialogue, exchange and co-operation guaranteeing peace, stability and prosperity’, and which, according to the signing parties, ‘requires a strengthening of democracy and respect for human rights, sustainable and balanced economic and social development, measures to combat poverty and promotion of greater understanding between cultures’. Despite these noble aims, a recent report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) on the human rights implications of the MEDA Programme [Byrne and Shamas, 2002] revealed an almost complete absence of methodological thinking within the EU and Euro-Mediterranean institutions