Middle East & North Africa

In this ambitious study, Anna K. Boucher and Justin Gest present a unique analysis of immigration governance across thirty countries. Relying on a database of immigration demographics in the world's most important destinations, they present a novel taxonomy and an analysis of what drives different approaches to immigration policy over space and time. In an era defined by inequality, populism, and fears of international terrorism, they find that governments are converging toward a 'Market Model' that seeks immigrants for short-term labor with fewer outlets to citizenship - an approach that resembles the increasingly contingent nature of labor markets worldwide.

Diane Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School, traveled to Iraq where she heard from Syrian refugees frustrated that so many people know so little about them. (Kirk Carapezza/WGBH)

Robert Springborg, a preeminent senior scholar of the Middle East has joined the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) community this semester as Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

A policy paper by former MEI Visiting Scholar Hedi Larbi on the need to enhance regional cooperation and build towards an integrated infrastructure in the Middle East to promote growth and unity in the region.

During the fall 2015 semester, former Minister Hedi Larbi convened eight distinguished experts, each with direct operational and academic experience in Arab countries and economies to participate in a study group titled Rewriting the Arab Social Contract: Toward Inclusive Development and Politics in the Arab World. Over the course of seven sessions during the semester, these experts contributed  to an integrated approach to the historical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the Arab uprisings, focusing in particular on the often overlooked economic and social issues at the root of the uprisings.

"Hundreds of thousands of desperate and dehumanized individuals transform their former local grumblings or security-forced passivity into a growing global network of terrorists and anarchists whose numbers are beyond the capacity of any intelligence system’s ability to monitor, arrest, prevent, or shut down."

"The total potential annual costs of climate change direct damage impacts under the highest emissions scenario, the report says, would reach $2.8 billion a year by 2040 and a staggering $23 billion a year by 2080. The total cumulative costs of direct damage impacts and forgone economic growth potential would reach figures that are almost incomprehensible for a small state like Lebanon: $139 billion by 2080..."

Excerpt from an October 16 installment of the “Inside the Middle East" Q&A Series, with Minister Hedi Larbi, Former Minister of Economic Infrastructure and Sustainable Development and Middle East Initiative Fall 2015 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, on the role of International Monetary Institutions such as the World Bank and IMF in encouraging and implementing economic reforms during the political transition in Tunisia.

"The sudden eruption of the mass protests during the past two weeks was triggered by the garbage problem, which itself captured the deeper weaknesses of the political system that finally caused deep and daily pain in the lives of every citizen — and citizens recognized that the problem was in the nature of the moribund governance system that was manned by their sectarian leaders. So Lebanon now faces a direct confrontation between these two strong forces: on the one hand, an angry, embittered citizenry that cannot long endure the discomfort of lack of essential services and the indignity of the apparent uncaring attitude of the government, and, on the other, a powerful political elite that will fight back to protect its privileges."

A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East.