Towards Privilege-Resistant Economic Policies in MENA

Abstract

Unemployment rates in the Middle East
 and North Africa (MENA) region are among the highest in the
 world, especially for young graduates. Policy
 recommendations to date in the field of governance for
 private sector policymaking have been too general and too
 removed from concrete, actionable policy outcomes. This
 report presents, for the first time to fill this policy and
 operational gap by answering the following question: what
 good governance features should be instilled in the design
 of economic policies and institutions to help shield them
 from capture, discretion, and arbitrary implementation? The
 report presents an innovative conceptual framework that
 encapsulates the governance features that can shield
 policies from capture, discretion, and arbitrary enforcement
 that limits competition. Based on this framework, a
 check-list of policy features in a wide range of policy
 areas relevant to private sector development policy is
 presented, notably in terms of: (i) the process of
 policy-making (ex-ante); (ii) the actual policies,
 regulations, and their implementation (for example, business
 regulations, procurement, financing, trade); and (iii)
 competition policy and other attributes like open-business
 and transparency measures that help identify, and prevent or
 deter anti-competitive market behavior and outcomes
 (ex-post). The report benchmarks eight countries along the
 framework and checklist of indicators, pointing, for each
 country, to policy gaps and poor governance features that
 make these countries prone to capture and discretion. The
 report offers a menu of operational and technical
 entry-points to engage the capture agenda in a concrete way,
 one that may be more politically tractable in some of the
 client countries.