Two years after the Arab Spring raged across most of the Middle East countries at various degrees, the economic fall out continues to worry most of the region’s population despite the positive outlook at revolutions that made political change.
The Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) issued recently its second report titled Arab Opinion Index (AOI), a general survey in Arab countries that works to capture the general mood of the region’s population.
The first AOI was conducted two years ago, where a total of 16,173 respondents from 12 countries participated. This time the number of countries and respondents have increased to 14 countries where 21,350 respondents participated, which the AOI authors said represent 89 percent of the Arab population that makes it the largest of its kind so far. The survey was carried out by 14 research institutions throughout the Arab world.
For those interviewed, the most important issue to worry about is unemployment, followed by rising prices and inflation. In addition, there are the deteriorating economic conditions in a general way. On the same level there is political instability. That was followed by poverty, poor public services and financial and administrative corruption.
Generally speaking, the survey found out that half of the Arab population agrees that problems of economic nature are the most important problems facing the people.
On how those surveyed feel about efforts exerted to face up to these problems, 14 percent of the respondents said the governments are seriously trying to face up to these economic problems while 40 percent think authorities are showing seriousness to some extent, 20 percent think authorities are not serious and 25 percent think these authorities are not serious at all in facing up to economic problems.
As a reflection on this deteriorating situation, the survey found out that 22 percent of the respondents want to migrate though percentages vary from as high as 54 percent in Sudan, to 33 percent in Lebanon, 25 percent in Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan and as little as 2 percent in Kuwait and 6 percent in Saudi Arabia.
However, the main reason behind migration is economic and desire to improve financial conditions of the individual, but still other reasons like security and political stability count though having a small percentage of 10 percent.
The two years elapsed so far have witnessed more deterioration of the economic conditions as represented in widening budget deficits in countries like Egypt and Syria, whose economies were greatly affected by political instability that has direct impact on soft industries like tourism and inability to conclude agreements with world financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund that could have sent a positive signal and open the way for more loans and investments.
Yet the main problem, in fact, is the lack of any economic vision charting the way ahead. To be fair, that was an inherited situation from the deposed regimes. In fact the whole Arab region has been suffering from this lack of vision even though at times it enjoyed a relative degree of political stability.
The emphasis first was on the public sector to be the main provider of goods and services and to a large extent at subsidized, affordable prices. But with the growing population, the need to provide job opportunities, more services and commodities, the philosophy based on public sector leadership started to give in gradually to some sort of privatization so as to pool more resources, engage private sector in what it can do best and better than public sector.
But that was carried out in a selective, piece by piece approach instead of having an overall strategy with its legal, administrative foundations clearly charted out. And the result was a system that becomes too difficult to define and that could easily be attributed to the fact that the region is passing through a stage of state building where politics takes the upper hand.
Tunisia is a case to be pointed here. It is a country relatively small in terms of population, where there is a relatively expanding and more developed middle class and a degree of entrepreneurship that compensates for the lack of natural resources as enjoyed by some other Arab countries. Yet despite this it was the first country to experience the Arab Spring and so far has not managed to cross the transitional gap and establish a new model for the post revolution Tunisia.
That brings to the fore the revolving question — which one will lead the way; politics or economy? The need for an agreed upon vision politically, economically and socially may fall well within the political atmosphere, but politics is no longer confined to political parties, elections and parliament only. The recent demonstrations in Turkey and to some extent Brazil is pointing to the new emerging fact of the need to take care of new forces that raise the issue of legitimacy of any regime. And part of that legitimacy is an economic one.
