Militarism and Welfare Distribution in the Middle East and North Africa

Year 2014, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 68 - 91, 01.12.2014

Erkan Gunes Mehmet Fatih Aysan

Abstract

Most of the Middle Eastern and North Africa (MENA) countries display a significant contrast with the industrialized countries in terms of welfare distribution. This study sheds light on the political economic structures leading to good and poor welfare efforts spent in the MENA region with a particular emphasis on the militaristic aspects of states. The analysis of causal relationships between different configurations of conditions and welfare efforts spent by states is performed with a systematic method of inference making called the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). For this comparison, eight countries–namely Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen–are selected based on their relevance to the topic and availability of the relevant data.aspects such as high amount of military expenditure, high number of armed forces personnel and praetorian relationship between the military and the government are associated with good welfare distribution. Since this is a qualitative study, it does not provide explanation about the net effects of each variable on the welfare distribution. It could, however, serve as a preliminary study that provides insights to future research on militarism and welfare distribution in the MENA region

Keywords

Middle East and North Africa, militarism, welfare distribution, social policy, political economy, qualitative comparative analysis

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