ABSTRACT
How one evaluates the Middle East’s growth record depends in no small part on what time period one considers and what expectations one has. Over the last few decades, the region’s performance has been middling in comparison to other developing regions. But the longer the time frame adopted, the more consideration given to the region’s inherent advantages, and the more that the point of comparison is the absolute gap with the industrial West rather than the growth rate relative to other developing countries, the more disappointing the Middle East’s performance has been. The region was well placed for rapid growth in the last fifty years, being close—physically, historically, and often culturally—to the booming European market, having many countries well endowed in natural resources or human capital (though seldom in both), and in many cases having powerful friends prepared to extend significant assistance. But despite these advantages, only Israel and the Gulf oil monarchies have since the mid-twentieth century narrowed the gap between themselves and the advanced industrial economies, while almost all other Middle Eastern countries have fallen further and further behind the West. And fifty years is a short period of time for the history-conscious people of the Middle East, whose point of reference for how their societies should be fairing is often the days of glory in centuries past, when the Middle East was more advanced and more powerful than Europe.
