Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa: A Comparative Perspective

Can production for global markets help business groups to mobilize collectively? Under what conditions does globalization enable the private sector to develop independent organizational bases and create effective relationships with the state? Focusing on varied Moroccan and Tunisian responses to trade liberalization in the 1990s, Melani Cammett argues that two constitutive dimensions of business-government relations shape business responses to global economic opening: the balance of power between business and the state before economic opening and the preexisting business class structure. These two dimensions combine to form different configurations of business-government relations, including 'distant' and 'close' linkages, leading to divergent interests and, hence, strategic behavior by industrialists. The book also extends the analysis to additional country cases, including India, Turkey, and Taiwan, and examines how different patterns of business-government relations affect processes of industrial upgrading.