HISHAM ALAOUI AND ROBERT SPRINGBORG, EDS. The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2021). 297pp. $85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781626379350.

Abstract

Education is a vastly complex social sphere teetering on the cusp of major transformation. In this critical moment of change, investigating central problematics in education becomes not only edifying but imperative. The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World is a welcome and timely effort that pays attention to an understudied facet of education in an important part of the world. Utilizing a political-economic lens across a range of topics and geographies, the volume asks why educational quality remains low across Arab countries despite substantial educational spending, improved student access and robust donor support. The volume’s point of departure is that a political-economic lens not only explains the perennial underperformance of “Arab” education, but is also its panacea. The solution to obstinate educational problems, the editors argue, “must engage underlying political and economic problems first – not simply technical or pedagogical issues regarding the practice of instruction” (239). The editors, who readily admit that they have little experience in education in the Arab world, untenably dismiss critical issues of educational philosophy, pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, school organization, teacher training, and educational infrastructure and technology, treating those as mere “technical” issues. Forcing the massively complex and multi-faceted problems of education into a limited purview of political economy, the volume sidelines experts in the multidisciplinary field of education studies and barely converses with educational scholarship – which has a long tradition of engagement with politicaleconomic issues. Grounded in political science and economics, the volume’s central thesis is that Arab states are “limited access orders” that privilege some (insiders) and exclude most (outsiders). Those orders face a central dilemma. How do they reform education in a way that “stimulate[s] economic growth without inducing demands for political openings” (3)? Since education reforms tend to