Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa
A Comparative Perspective

Pre-economic liberalization relations between business and the state condition how groups organize before large-scale economic change.

Melani Claire Cammett (Author)

9780521869508, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 July 2007

286 pages
23.2 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.524 kg

'Professor Cammett has presented a richly documented analysis of the domestic conditions under which forces of global competition may encourage business groups in developing countries to organize collectively … It conveys a subtle appreciation of the conditions under which neo-liberal economic reform may or may not engender collective political capacities of business communities.' Middle East Journal

Can production for global markets help business groups to mobilize collectively? Under what conditions does globalization enable the private sector to develop independent organizational bases and create effective relationships with the state? Focusing on varied Moroccan and Tunisian responses to trade liberalization in the 1990s, Melani Cammett argues that two constitutive dimensions of business-government relations shape business responses to global economic opening: the balance of power between business and the state before economic opening and the preexisting business class structure. These two dimensions combine to form different configurations of business-government relations, including 'distant' and 'close' linkages, leading to divergent interests and, hence, strategic behavior by industrialists. The book also extends the analysis to additional country cases, including India, Turkey, and Taiwan, and examines how different patterns of business-government relations affect processes of industrial upgrading.

Part I. The Framework: 1. Rethinking globalization and business politics
2. Globalization and integration in international apparel manufacturing networks: the new politics of industrial development
Part II. The Institutional Context: 3. Business and the state in Tunisia: statist development, capital dispersion, and preemptive integration in world markets
4. Business in the state in Morocco: business penetration of the state and the genesis of the 'fat cat'
Part III. Globalization and Institutional Change: 5. Business as usual: state-sponsored industrialization and business collective inaction in Tunisia
6. Fat cats and self-made men: class conflict and business collective action in Morocco
7. Globalization, business politics, and industrial policy in developing countries.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Comparative politics [JPB]