ABSTRACT
Since 1973, the Arab world has been host to a growth frenzy. Upheavals in virtually every sector of the political economy have relegated social scientists to the spectator gallery. Political scientists have sought refuge in daily newspapers merely to keep abreast of the continuous drama of power plays and interregional tension. Sociologists have been consumed by speculation about the psychological dangers of transforming desert outposts into industrial states virtually overnight. Development economists, saddled with analytic tools largely inappropriate to capital-rich, labor-short situations, have offered little more than a culture-bound brand of Western modernization and industrialization. Indeed, those who are in touch with the frenetic pace of events in the Arab Middle East and North Africa recognize that they are students of a region truly unique in modern economic history.
