The Political Alliance in Yemen, with or Versus the Economic Reform [Archives:1999/41/Law & Diplomacy]

(Final in a Series) Mohammad Al-Qaheri, 
M.A. in Economics 
C) Unstable political coalition: Political instability is often measured by the change of regime or its government or by coup d’tat or strikes, demonstrations, anarchy, rebellion or by election of a new government. So often, pressures are exercised by the political groups that are independent from the coalition. 
However, in the case of Yemen, we have not seen any radical change of the regime or its governments for 20 years. The political instability has taken a different form since the influential groups do exist in the coalition. So ,as a result of the failure of the government to provide services to the society, they view the potentials as a prey and not allow democratic institutions to peacefully focus the public interests. Thus, protestations to such a coalition is manifest through violence, explosion in petrol pipes exp, kidnapping, killing, robbing, rebellion of tribes, or through other negative means such as blocking reforms, ostracizing technocrats, scientists as well as intellectuals, expulsion of most of the qualified staff, etc. All these factors increase the economic, social and political difficulties which will distinctly threaten the political stability, though this danger may not lead to changing the political system due to its compromising solutions. This threatening may , in course of time, take new forms and lead to even more dangerous results for the reforms, development process, as well as society and the coalition. Generally speaking, the non-existence of political stability is an epidemic in the political history of Yemen. This is mainly because of the continuance of political violence, conflicts and struggle for power. 
6- The political coalition in Yemen tends more to keeping subsistence economy than accomplishing any development, sustaining market economy and capital upgrading. The simple capitalism, we see nowadays, is the crony capitalism, that performs its role without any restrictions for the sectors that are deprived from its benefits. This capitalism can not be generalized to be a general system for the society and the whole market. The coalition is against reforms as it is not united, weak and unstable. Therefore, the political feasibility of economic reforms are destined to fail. While the experts controlling mobilization of the funds of the International bodies such as the World Bank highly recommend the coalition’s success in carrying out the decisions to stabilise the structural establishment as the first step of economic reforms. However, we can reply to this by the following: The success achieved is ascribable to the absence of active economists, as well as pressure groups that are independent of the coalition on the one hand and to the aggressive oppression on the other . The success of these decisions has been achieved at the expense of the weak groups as the burdens of these decisions were transferred to the shoulders of these poor and weak group who could not at all withstand their consequences despite July 98 revolution. However, the coalition failed to achieve compensatory procedures to fight poverty and economic equalization and structural reform due to resistance of the pressure groups which are close allies to the coalition. Therefore, that praise and recommendation are baseless and vague and can be explained as follows: 
The first one is that those organizations which have introduced reforms, can not withdraw from this. Therefore, they go on accepting any compromises the coalition offers. It goes on encouraging it with the condition that no violations of conditionality is allowed to occur. The second one relates to the bureaucratic deviation of the employees of these organizations who follow the program in Yemen so as to stay in power . If bribed they may present to the strategic decision makers of these organizations and to the general opinion, a positive evaluation about their mission in Yemen. However, in spite of all that, economic reforms as suggested above are the most viable solutions for the problems of Yemen. Yemen’s association with these organizations and donor countries in these reforms will help to proper utilization of resources in a productive form, allowing the productive and developing potentials to grow, correcting the shortcomings of economic policies and making available finance from these countries as well as organizations. If this is done, significant progress in the economic development will be made. The political development will come in succession after the economic development being achieved as there is a strong harmony and coherence between these two dimensions. For whenever there is free hand granted to production potentials, exchange of commodities, and free economy, there will be a corresponding access to political rights, politicians’ interest to gain the public satisfaction, peaceful transfer of power in consonance with the adoption of the international and regional norms. 
By this Yemen can achieve the twin goals of reaching the market economy and of practicing political democracy. In other words, this will take Yemen out of the shackles of old political value system to the contemporary socio-economic ethos. To sum up, reforms should continue to be implemented despite the weak factors and the partial success of the reforms which are the best chances for implementing all these reforms, even the change in the constitution of political coalition itself. 
References: 
1,2,10. Haggard, Lafay and Morrisson: The Political Feasibility of Adjustment in Developing Countries, OECD, Paris, 1995. 
3. Azam et Morrisson: La Faisabilite Politique de L’adjustement en Co’te-d’Ivoire et an Maroc, Oced, Paris, 1994. 
4. References to structural establishment, fighting poverty, economic equalization and structural reforms can be found in the International Fund and World Bank Documents for Yemen. 
5,8. Mancur Olson “Dictatorship, Democracy and Development”, American Political Science Review, vol. 87, n¡ 3. Sept. 1993. 
Olson also says that War Lords used to attack farmers at every harvest in Old China. They used to take all that they needed and then they destroyed everything. Therefore, there was no chance of satisfying population’s needs there. This had negatively reflected on the soldiers behavior. Then, dictatorship came to preserve the stability. However, this did not satisfy the really needy people. Besides, it posed some obstacles in the course of democracy. Therefore, that trend was not at all economic or reasonable. 
6,7. Thomas Callaghy. Lost Between State and Market: the Politics of Adjustment in Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria; in J. Nelson, ed.: Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World. Princeton University Press, 1990. 
9. Williams J. Baumol. Enterpreurship: Productive, Unproductive and Destructive , Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, n ¡5, pt 1. 
Baumol says that in spite of the presence of interpreneur a long time ago, he applied, on certain occasions, unproductive rules, and destructive rules on the other occasions. He only applied positive rules on a few occasions. His rule system was based on the three cases related to the values and awards system. The important thing is that this system should have a trend to play a productive and renewing role.
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