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38 results

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  • 13 - Sonatrach: the political economy of an Algerian state institution

  • Edited by David G. Victor, University of California, San Diego, David R. Hults, Stanford University, California, Mark C. Thurber, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    Oil and Governance
    Published online:
    05 January 2012
    Print publication:
    08 December 2011, pp 557-598

  • Summary

    Introduction: overarching themes

    The hydrocarbons sector is Algeria’s primary source of economic activity and a major source of revenue for the government. As is evident in most other case studies in this book, the authoritarian Algerian government has sought to promote efficiency within its hydrocarbons sector to maximize revenues to the state without relinquishing control over this industry in Algeria. Its strategy has hinged on a national oil company (NOC), Sonatrach, which is involved in virtually every significant oil and natural gas project in the country. Sonatrach participates in joint ventures with other domestic and foreign hydrocarbons companies, owns several subsidiaries, and has recently developed worldwide operations but these operations are still under the control of the government. Sonatrach is a particularly important player in the natural gas market, though its oil production is significant as well.

    Across most of the economy, Algeria has pursued a variety of policy reforms aimed at boosting transparency and economic efficiency. Such reforms have encouraged greater competition and have enhanced the performance of the Algerian hydrocarbons industry, but the government’s strong desire to retain control over this sector explains why these efforts at liberalization are invariably abandoned when they diminish the state’s control over Sonatrach. Despite repeated promises for a more liberalized and market-oriented hydrocarbons industry, the status quo of patronage relationships between Sonatrach and the state usually prevails. To be sure, the relative importance of these pressures – liberalization and control – varies with oil prices and other factors. Moreover, internationalization of the hydrocarbons industry has put pressure on Sonatrach to enhance its efficiency quite apart from particular government policies. Yet the overall strategy and performance of Sonatrach’s activities in the hydrocarbons industry in Algeria remain remarkably the same.

  • Reformist Ideology in the Arab World: The Cases of Tunisia and Lebanon*

  • John P. Entelis
  • Journal:
    The Review of Politics / Volume 37 / Issue 4 / October 1975
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 August 2009, pp. 513-546

  • Ideology refers to a set of basic assumptions, both normative and empirical, about the nature and purposes of man and society which serve to explain the human condition. At the political level, it is a belief system through which man perceives, understands, and explains the universe as well as nature and the human community. Ideology also guides individual and collective action, sets forth the political goals one may seek and regulates the ways in which they may be obtained, and defines man's rights, privileges, andobligations. Finally, ideology sets the “parameters of expectations.”

  • A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco: On the Outside of Europe Looking In. By Gregory White. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. 252p. $62.50 cloth, $20.95 paper

  • John P. Entelis
  • Journal:
    Perspectives on Politics / Volume 1 / Issue 1 / March 2003
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 January 2004, pp. 225-226
    Print publication:
    March 2003

  • The search for a fuller understanding of how development and democracy interact in Third World countries continues to interest analysts and policymakers alike, especially when applied to the Arab world—the region least predisposed to either development or democracy. Competing political economy and political culture theories have been advanced to explain the pervasive absence of democratic politics in a context of alternative socioeconomic performances ranging from advanced to backward. Tunisia and Morocco, former French-colonized Arab-Muslim states located in northern Africa, serve as middle-income countries whose politics are undemocratic but whose social and economic performance has been moderately successful. Rather than limiting himself to either of these alternative theoretical approaches, Gregory White locates his analysis at the intersection of the external international political economy and the internal domestic economy and society. By elaborating these case studies within the framework of the European Union and its impact on peripheral middle-income actors, he advances both our understanding of state-society relations in transitional polities and the interaction that takes place between such polities and the powerful global forces that configurate and constrain their domestic policy choices.

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