The Road Not Taken: A Typology of the Welfare Regimes in the Middle East and North Africa

The academic scrutiny of the welfare regimes in the Middle East has been subsumed under other avenues of inquiry such as clientelism and authoritarianism. In the thrall of the concept of rentier state and globalization as an overarching economic force, these welfare regimes have not been studied yet in their totality. This paper aims to incorporate the Middle East into the literature on the comparative political economy of welfare regimes in the developing countries. By applying cluster analysis to 17 countries in the region for the time period between 1997 and 2007 with respect to three dimensions; labor market protection, welfare mix, and welfare outcome; the main findings of this paper reveal systemic divergences among Middle Eastern countries, which can be categorized into four distinct clusters, namely protective oil-rich, non-protective oil-rich, mixed, and corporatist regimes.