ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the economic sources and consequences of the liberalization trend in the Arab world and Turkey, focusing on Algeria as one of the more extreme and interesting cases in the late 1980s. Algeria, known for its political and economic stability for the previous twenty years, entered its most dramacic crisis since winning independence from France in 1962. In order to understand the situation Algeria faced in 1990, it is critical then to examine the goals and experience of economic nationalism as well as the pressures toward economic liberalization. On the international front, Algeria, like Turkey and Egypt, became more thoroughly integrated with the world capitalist system in the post-World War II era. In Algeria, as in Turkey and Egypt, even in the heyday of their economic nationalism, there existed domestic forces favoring an increased role for private capitalism and for foreign investment.
