ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the systems that emerged from the restructurings undertaken in the resource-poor labor-abundant (RPLA) and the resource-rich labor-abundant (RRLA) countries in the 1990s. In the RPLA countries—Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan—exhausted political regimes needed to find a way to consolidate their rule and at the same time get the economic growth process restarted. Structural adjustment programs generally seek to stimulate national savings by raising interest rates and liberalizing the financial markets to ensure that capital flows to where it is needed most. As the policies advocated by the Washington Consensus took root and became more established in various developing countries around the globe, dissenting views and heterodox practices began to emerge. Crony capitalism was clearly not a part of the Washington Consensus plan, but in Egypt, as elsewhere, it seems to have been the outcome of the policy changes of the 1990s.
