![]() In parts of MENA, political instability, fragility, and conflict compound the challenges faced as governments try to handle the pandemic. ![]() A more equitable rollout of vaccines across the region is essential for recovery. By early December, the United Arab Emirates had the world’s highest fully vaccinated population at 90%, while Yemen only fully vaccinated 1% of its population. Again, the outlook is uneven, with richer nations ahead of the field. Indeed, most MENA countries entered the pandemic overconfident and ill-prepared to cope and vaccination rates too will affect their economic recovery. On top of its tragic human toll, the global health crisis of 2020/21 has shown the extent to which economic performance depends on pandemic control, with MENA economies among those paying the price for decades of underinvestment in public health. Thus, forecasts for an average regional GDP growth rate of 2.8% in 2021 and a brighter 4.2% in 2022 if the pandemic recedes mask individual country differences. The performance of each of the region’s 20 economies depends on its individual exposure to oil-price fluctuations and how well it is managing the pandemic. From a policy perspective, my findings underscore the importance of targeted institution-building measures aimed at regaining the trust of the citizenry in post-conflict nation-building efforts.Almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is tenuous and uneven. ![]() Using individual and city-level data from Tunisia between 20, I find that protests have a first-order negative impact on trust in Tunisia. ![]() Exploiting Arab Barometer (AB) survey and georeferenced data on conflict events from the Armed Conflict Locations Events Data (ACLED), I study the effect of conflict on political trust. At the same time, little is known about how erupting conflicts and civil unrest in the MENA region further erode trust in government. Since the onset of the Arab Spring in 2010-11, governments in the MENA region struggle to rebuild the broken trust among their citizens and break the vicious political cycle in which the “Arab Spring keeps coming back.” Hitherto academic literature agrees that instability and institutional weaknesses in the MENA region persist, and countries will keep relapsing into conflict unless governments gain back the trust of their citizens. ![]()
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