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PEACE AS SOCIAL DUMPING IN THE MIDDLE EAST? PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE FROM ISRAEL, EGYPT AND JORDAN
Author(s) -
Piazza James A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
southeastern political review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 0730-2177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2000.tb00566.x
Subject(s) - middle east , capital (architecture) , settlement (finance) , incentive , dividend , political science , political economy , development economics , economics , market economy , law , geography , finance , archaeology , payment
One of the celebrated rewards of a comprehensive peace settlement in the currently stalled Arab‐Israeli Peace Process is the peace dividend: economic development through intra‐regional trade and capital investment. The peace dividend is also positioned by its enthusiasts as a process that will reinforce peace while delivering economic benefits to all of the parties involved. Regionally integrated Middle Eastern markets for goods, capital, services and labor will bind the region together and will, in turn, reinforce the Peace Process itself, the peacemakers claim. However, what has been absent from discussions of the economic dimension of peace are the potential effects of increased intra‐regional integration on workers, wages and labor standards. Using a model developed by Erickson and Kuruvilla, this paper determines that between 1965 and 1997 the possibility that the peace dividend will have a negative impact on wages and jobs in the region increased substantially, a process known as social dumping. Increased incentives for Israeli manufacturers to relocate to Jordan and Egypt to exploit growing labor‐cost differentials is argued to have potentially severe consequences for workers in the three countries and may ultimately erode support for the Peace Process itself.