Abstract
Following the decline of the colonial system in the second half of the twentieth century, the notion that state power could induce economic development had become widely accepted. In postcolonial regions with weak states, state-building was a prerequisite for economic development, and had developed into a separate field of specialization within economics. Yet, after 70 years of state-building, economic development in the Fertile Crescent has been hobbled by persistent internal conflicts that modern theories of political economy and economic development did not anticipate. The nation-states of the Fertile Crescent today not only perform below their economic potential, but also suffer from physical destruction on an unprecedented scale.
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Notes
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© 2016 Mark Tomass
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Tomass, M. (2016). The Remaking of the Fertile Crescent. In: The Religious Roots of the Syrian Conflict. Twenty-First Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137525710_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137525710_11
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