ECONOMIC POLICIES OF ISLAMIC COUNTRIES

Within the framework of the course in Language, Politics and Economics of the Arab countries, this teaching is aimed at providing students with the analytical and methodological background tools to understand the major economic and social dynamics that have been characterising Arab countries since their independence. The Arab world is currently faced with several socio-economic challenges, such as high levels of unemployment, labour precariousness, huge social inequalities, a fragile production structure, scarcely diversified and strongly dependent on exogenous rents. However, there exist significant political and socio-economic differences among Arab countries, which need to be taken into account in order to well understand the complexity of this geographical area, its current developments and problems. Studying the socio-economic problems of the Arab region, and the social and economic policies explaining them, through a historical perspective is necessary for a correct and deep understanding of its current problems and future perspectives .

i) The course will allow students to acquire a good knowledge of the following issues:
- Major socio-economic characteristics and problems of the Arab region
- History of the social and economic policies pursued from the post-independence period until now.

ii) A country-case study approach will enable students to develop a specific awareness and understanding of the different political economies in the Arab region.

iii) By examining a plurality of sources, students will learn to adopt a critical approach in assessing past and current social and economic policies in the Arab region.

Knowledge of English
Background knowledge of the contemporary history of Arab countries

The course will be structured around three parts.

i) The first part will present major economic and social problems of Arab countries (lack of diversification, high disparities, labour problems, food import dependency and so on).

ii) The second part will explain the reasons behind such problems by analysing the major social and economic policies implemented from the post-independence period until today, specifically:
- State centred policies and Import substituting industrialization (in the 1960s-1970s)
- Free market reforms and the structural adjustment programs (since the mid-1980s until today).

iii) The third part will deal with specific country case studies such as Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

- Paciello, M.C. (2010), Introduzione all’economia del mondo arabo, Edizione Nuova Cultura, Università La Sapienza, Roma, 2010 (for the first and second part of the course).
- For the third part, students are required to select three case studies from those covered by the course (for each case study, a list of academic articles and chapters in English will be provided to the students at the beginning of the course).
- Power-point presentations of the course (available on moodle platform - https://moodle.unive.it/login/index.php - after each lesson).

The topics covered in class will be discussed with students by reflecting on specific questions raised by the professor or on short articles from daily newspapers related to the course.

- Power-point presentations
- Case study analysis
- Analysis of audio sources and videos
- Critical analysis of primary sources (interviews, official documents, statistical data..)
- Complementary readings on the covered topics (not compulsory for the exam)

Italian

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development