Comparative Political Economics and Institutions in the Middle East and North Africa

Open Access
- Author:
- Idris, Muhammed Yassin
- Graduate Program:
- Political Science
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 21, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Christopher Jon Zorn, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- Political Economy
Middle East and North Africa
Political Instability
Financial Markets
Political Institutions
Natural Language Procsesing - Abstract:
- This dissertation introduces modern machine-based approaches to extracting structured data from unstructured text (using various natural language processing techniques that are considered the cutting-edge in a variety of dis- ciplines ranging from political to computer science) and applies them to two important substantive questions in the study of comparative political economics and institutions in the Middle East and North Africa: \noindent First, I consider if, and how, socio-political instability during the Arab Spring influences financial markets throughout the region. Building on existing studies of political instability and financial markets, I provide a more nuanced theoretical explanation for investor reactions to civil unrest in which financial market participants do not care about political instability in and of itself, but how instability influences the risk associated with uncertain returns under different policy regimes. To test these arguments, I introduce a system for machine coding daily-level event data on socio-political instability and empirically assess whether escalating instability, turnover and concessions influence volatility on the Borse de Tunis and the Egyptian Exchange. \noindent Part II of this thesis, based on joint work with Burt Monroe, Tarek Masoud and Eitan Tzelgov, reconsiders the impotence of legislative institutions within the Middle East. Drawing upon a unique dataset of Egyptian parliamentary records: 32,000 pages of transcripts from hundreds of legislative sessions between 2004 and 2009, we find evidence that suggests that MPs respond to electoral incentives during their time in parliament Specifically, we find that members of the regime party as well as regime-aligned secular opposition use their legislative positions to engage in patronage dominated discussions. Muslim Brothers, on the other hand, who are still able to engage in clientalism through their private social and religious networks dominate discussions sensitive to the regime (e.g., political reform).