State Business Relations in the Arab Spring Countries
The Arab Spring has revealed the black side of close state business relations (SBR). The high observed levels of cronyism resulting from these relations in these countries played a big role in fomenting public anger. Generally speaking, enough relevant data is not available for the Arab Spring countries; but observations, reports and studies indicate that such connections were so intense and influential that they invoked public discontent providing one of the major reasons for the 2011 Revolutions especially in Egypt and Tunisia.
According to the findings of Sabry's PhD thesis, a number of institutional factors seem to affect the outcomes of close SBR. The considered outcomes are economic growth and cronyism. The study, however, doesn’t provide case studies for examining the empirical findings it has reached and the theoretical justifications it has given. In this context the proposed work try to address this concern using as case studies three of the Arab Spring countries for which relatively more data is available, Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. The addressed research question would be: in the countries of the Arab Spring, where observed close state-business relations has resulted in high levels of cronyism and varying economic growth performances, what are the institutional factors that seem to have caused these outcomes? Are certain forms of SBR more responsible than others for such outcomes? Does this seem to conform to the empirical findings and theoretical justifications of Sabry (2013) or not? And why?