ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates industrial structure and policies and the extension of the service sector in Arab countries in the light of the production versus allocation states paradigm. It presents an analytical background and discusses the main hypotheses relating the distinction between the allocation/production states to their attitudes toward industry and services. Then, it also examines the industrial development process in the light of the state's regulation of domestic and external revenues sources. From the simple allocation/production paradigm, people led to successive revisions and qualifications in order to cope with the growing complexity of relations of Arab states to oil rent. People find distinctions between surplus and deficit Arab countries, between oil rich and poor states, between production and circulation economies, rentier and recipient states, oil dependent and tax dependent states. The industrial sector in the Arab countries accurately depicts the ambiguities and contradictions of the Arab states attitudes toward industry in the last 25 years.
