Rethinking social contracts in the MENA region: Economic governance, contingent citizenship, and state-society relations after the Arab uprisings

Abstract

Abstract This article examines post-2011 transformations of economic governance in the MENA region. It argues that Arab regimes have responded to the threats posed by the 2011 uprisings not by embracing appeals for inclusive social contracts, but through the imposition of repressive-exclusionary social pacts in which previously universal economic and social rights of citizens are being redefined as selective benefits. These pacts are shown to represent a significant shift in economic governance and in state-society relations in the MENA region, evident in the growing institutionalization of “contingent citizenship” as a framework for the organization of state-society relations and the management of social policy. In stressing discontinuities in economic governance, this argument challenges claims that the reassertion of authoritarianism in Arab states after 2011 represents a “back-to-the-future” process exhibiting little change from the formally inclusive social pacts associated with pre-2011 models of authoritarian governance.