Minerva (2006) 44:103–112 Ó Springer 2006

DOI 10.1007/s11024-005-5404-9

Essay Review

A.B. ZAHLAN

ARAB SOCIETIES AS KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES

United Nations Development Program and Arab Fund for

Economic and Social Development, Arab Human Development
Report 2003: Building a Knowledge Society (New York: United
Nations Publications, 2003), xvi + 210 pp., ISBN: 92-1-126157-0

This report (hereafter AHD 2003) is a highly significant document

– and not only for the Arab world. Unlike most UN publications
on science, technology, and Third World development, it directly
relates the anaemic state of indigenous R&D in Arab countries to
the reliance that ‘rent-dominated’ Arab political cultures have cho-
sen to place on Western expertise. The report’s authors document
some – but by no means all – of the negative cultural, intellectual,
and economic consequences of the region’s self-imposed technologi-
cal dependency. They see an urgent need for all Arab nations to
transform themselves into ‘knowledge societies’. But how precisely
is this to happen?
HD 2003 was co-sponsored by the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), through its Arab Regional Bureau, and by the
Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD).
Founded by the League of Arab States, AFESD is the Arab
world’s equivalent of the World Bank. Rima Khalaf Hunaidi –
Director of UNDP’s Arab Regional Bureau, and a former Deputy
Prime Minister of Jordan – and Nader Ferghany led the team
responsible for producing AHD 2003 (and its predecessor, hereaf-
ter, AHD 2002).1
These two reports were written by Arab authors to inform, chal-
lenge, and motivate their fellow Arabs. Not intended as a scholarly
document, AHD 2002 highlighted the need for Arab countries to

1
United Nations Development Program and Arab Fund for Economic and Social Devel-
opment, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations
(New York: United Nations Publications, 2002).
104 A.B. ZAHLAN

extend political freedom, empower women, and strengthen indige-

nous educational and research institutions. Within a year of publica-
tion, AHD 2002 was downloaded from the UNDP website over a
million times – surely a record for a book on the Arab world.
Looking ahead, AHD 2003 is concerned more specifically with
the prospects of transforming Arab societies into ‘knowledge socie-
ties’.2 It begins with a review of changing social and political atti-
tudes in Arab countries, followed by six chapters covering a variety
of knowledge-related topics. It is worthwhile looking at both its
strengths and its weaknesses.
The first chapter defines terms. It asserts that there is a rela-
tionship between knowledge acquisition, economic activity, and
the productive capacity of a society (p. 37). So far, so good.
However, AHD 2003 then begins to lose its way, both methodo-
logically – employing a variety of definitions of knowledge – and
historically, as it attempts to make sense of the glorious Arab
past and the confusing present. It fails to account for the fact
that Arab countries with more ‘human capital’ – more university
students and graduates (at home and abroad) – and more R&D
per capita than either India or China, fail to perform economi-
cally as well as those two countries.
The discussion of knowledge dissemination that follows in
Chapter 2 touches on child rearing, educational standards in three
Arab countries, the mass media, and translation facilities. Worth-
while subjects, but again there are shortcomings. The chapter fails
to discuss how knowledge has been transmitted and applied in
Arab infrastructure and industry during the past fifty years. Nor
does it mention the paucity and poor condition of Arab scientific
communities – a situation that seriously limits the capacity of Arab
professionals to express a collective position on matters of public
importance, or to prepare their societies to meet impending natural
and man-made catastrophes.3
On the other hand, AHD 2003 does identify state censorship as
a major obstacle to the diffusion of knowledge within the Arab
world, especially in relation to the marketing of books (p. 79). It
also notes the travel restrictions experienced by Arabs within
the Arab world. Inevitably, such restrictions severely inhibit

2
The author was a member of the Advisory Group for AHD 2002, and contributed a
background paper on the ‘Arab Brain Drain’ to AHD 2003.
3
There are, for example, more than one million Arab engineers and more than 60,000 PhD
graduates in the basic and applied sciences capable of doing research.
 ARAB SOCIETIES AS KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES 105

cooperation in science and scholarship. Indeed, Arab scientists and

technologists are twenty to forty times more likely to collaborate
with OECD researchers than with their colleagues in the Arab
world.4 Under the circumstances, it makes sense for AHD 2003 to
argue for increasing regional cooperation as well as for greater
interaction with other nations.
The following chapter discusses the production of knowledge in
the Arab world. The lack of statistical information is striking:
although published in 2003, the AHD Report had to depend upon
1995 data! According to this data, Arab countries compared well
with China and India – but less favourably with Brazil – in per
capita output of research papers (using the ISI Citation Index). By
contrast, Arab countries rated poorly in the output of patents.
Average Arab expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GNP was
0.2 per cent, one of the lowest in the world. While the Arab world
is slightly below average in the number of books published per cap-
ita in the social sciences, natural sciences, and the humanities, in
religious books it out-produces the world average by a factor of
three. Overall, the per capita output of books in the Arab world is
lower (by a factor greater than twenty) than that in industrial
countries (p. 78). Among the reasons cited for this low level of
knowledge productivity are censorship and the curtailment of aca-
demic freedom.
Chapter 4 begins with the difficulties encountered in measuring
Arab knowledge capital – and then bravely attempts to do just
that. After presenting the results of a ‘survey of Arab intellectuals
on the state of knowledge’ and a ‘measurement of knowledge capi-
tal’, the report decides to equate the state of human capital with
‘mean years of schooling’ (p. 90).
Oddly, the report ignores the fact that two-thirds of Arab adults
are literate, and that there is a large and growing population of
educated Arabs – including some fifteen million university gradu-
ates and more than one million graduate engineers. Another puz-
zling omission is the absence of any acknowledgement of the
relationship between Arab financial services, professional organiza-
tions, legal services, and technology policies. Yet without such en-
abling institutions, the production of knowledge is of little practical
benefit. This omission is particularly frustrating, given the existence

4
A.B. Zahlan, Science and Technology in the Arab World: Progress without Change (Beirut:
Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1999, in Arabic), Chapter 4.
106 A.B. ZAHLAN

of a vast body of historical and contemporary research that high-

lights their crucial role.5
What AHD 2003 fails to comprehend is that Arab development
does not require extensive R&D. What is needed, above all, are
innovative consulting, contracting, and engineering organizations,
capable of planning and implementing projects. Development bot-
tlenecks derive from a persistent inability to combine human
resources and support services (financial, legal, technical) with
effective government policies. Interestingly, the Koreans understood
and successfully responded to this challenge several decades ago,
even though Arab contracting firms were larger and more experi-
enced in 1970 than their Korean counterparts.6 While there are
more than 200,000 contracting firms in Arab countries, they lack
access to the kinds of enabling infrastructures enjoyed by their
OECD competitors, which could meet the sophisticated demands of
their own governments.
Chapter 5 deals with the organizational context of knowledge
acquisition, and focuses on recent failures to import technology
and knowhow through turnkey contracts. The chapter concludes
with the unsuccessful attempt in 1976 to establish an indigenous
Arab Fund for Science and Technology (p. 106). Arab governments
hope that foreign direct investment will solve the problem. Chapter
6 turns to questions of cultural heritage, religion, and language.
Political crises pervading the Arab world have prevented a coherent
analytical approach to these fields. Currently, such topics are sim-
ply beyond the reach of a UN report. Extensive scholarship is
needed before they can be usefully discussed.
Chapter 7 subjects the economic and technology policies of
Arab governments to a searching critique. Despite investing heavily
in university-led knowledge accumulation (both at home and
5
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783
(London: Knopf, 1999); T. Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in
Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); H.T.
Dickenson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London:
Methuen & Co., 1997); T.C.W. Blanning and Peter Wende (eds.), Reform in Great Britain and
Germany, 1750–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Richard Bonney (ed.), The Rise
of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); J. Innes,
‘The Domestic Face of the Military–Fiscal State: Government and Society in Eighteenth
Century Britain’, in Lawrence Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War: Britain, 1689–1815
(London: Routledge, 1993), 96–127; and David Nicholas, The Transformation of Europe, 1300–
1600 (London: Arnold, 1999). Over and above these European studies, there is a large literature
on the importance of these institutions for developing societies. See A.B. Zahlan, Acquiring
Technological Capacity (London: Macmillan, 1991).
6
See Zahlan, op. cit. note 5.
 ARAB SOCIETIES AS KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES 107

abroad), they have failed to benefit fully. To understand this fail-

ure, AHD 2003 analyses the relationship between political culture
and the extraction of raw materials. It states that the ‘rentier’ Arab
economies have opted to ‘rely heavily on foreign expertise, as this
approach provides quick and easy economic returns’ to the ruling
elites (p. 134). Regrettably, the costs include economic and techno-
logical stagnation, as well as the loss of millions of jobs and count-
less opportunities to acquire, create, and apply value-adding
technologies. Following two chapters that remind us how socio-
economic and political cultures have influenced Arab technological
capabilities, the report concludes with a discussion of measures nee-
ded to build societies capable of fostering intellectual and technical
innovation.

THE ROLE OF POLITICAL CULTURE

Like all UN reports, AHD 2003 reveals a disarming faith in quan-

tification. Its extensive use of international data should enable the
reader to compare Arab countries with other countries. Unfortu-
nately, statistical services in the Arab world do not provide ade-
quate information on human resources, employment, migration,
brain drains, research, economic and technology policy, profes-
sional associations, or cultural production. UN tables are too often
filled with outdated data, or just empty spaces.
What distinguishes AHD 2003 from other UN reports, however,
is its emphasis upon the political dimensions of intellectual, cul-
tural, and technical development. It is to these factors that our
attention must turn. There have been many UN initiatives to bol-
ster the scientific, educational, and research capabilities of Third
World countries. Some have encouraged the build-up of local infra-
structures. Others have called upon transnational corporations
(TNCs) to facilitate transfers of technology and expertise. UNE-
SCO, the UN agency most concerned with promoting the role of
science and technology in development, has focused on boosting
the production of indigenous scientists, engineers, and technicians.
Whatever their differences, these initiatives are similar in at least
three respects. First, they eschew close analysis of how the political
cultures of member states have promoted or inhibited the social
and intellectual values that sustain research and innovation. Sec-
ond, while their recommendations are always endorsed by science
108 A.B. ZAHLAN

ministers from the Arab world, they are rarely implemented.7

These two failings have begotten a third: the failure to recognize,
let alone explain, the connection between the absence of political
analysis and concerted action.
All these tendencies were displayed in a UN report on technol-
ogy capacity-building in Western Asia, published in 2001.8 In
some ways, this report prefigured AHD 2003. It dutifully summa-
rises measures already adopted by Arab states to stimulate innova-
tion, and offers useful recommendations about the potential value
of ‘technopoles’ and spin-off firms as agents of technology transfer.
What it does not discuss is the failure of past Arab initiatives to
achieve these laudable objectives. In fact, the share of high technol-
ogy exports in most Arab states still constitutes only 0.3 per cent of
total exports.9 Once again, an apparent lack of interest in results
removes the pressure on the UN to explain this lack of success. To
do so would require deeper inquiry into, among other things, the
political constraints that govern Arab educators and researchers.
It is instructive that, by contrast, AHD 2002 and AHD 2003
acknowledge that the failure of Arab societies to develop techno-
logical capabilities and foster innovation is primarily due to their
‘rent-dominated’ political cultures. The reports take as axiomatic
the belief that, the more democratic governments become in the
Arab world, the more likely they are to lead their people to the
promised land of technological self-sufficiency.
Set against UN and Arab traditions, this makes AHD 2003 in
many ways a radical document. Not only does it put political cul-
ture at the centre of analysis; it also parts company with Arab
commentators who assign primary responsibility for Arab ‘back-
wardness’ to Western and, more specifically, American interven-
tion. In their support for extensive democratic reforms, the report’s
authors are hardly apologists for the Arab status quo.
It would, of course, be folly to ignore the often malign impact
of Western influence. As the historian Carl Brown has argued,
‘Middle Eastern political culture has not just been shaped by intru-
sive Western influences in modern times. That is a trivial truth,
7
See A.B. Zahlan, Science and Science Policy in the Arab World (London: Croom Helm,
1980), 95–111.
8
UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Technology Capacity-Building
Initiatives for the 21st Century in the ESCWA Member Countries (Beirut: UNESCWA, 2001).
9
There are exceptions to this low figure: notably Tunisia, where, in 1999, they total 3% of all
exports; and Egypt, where the figure is 2%. See UN Economic and Social Commission for
Western Asia, New Indicators for Science, Technology, and Innovation in the Knowledge-Based
Society (Beirut: UNESCWA, 2003), 88.
 ARAB SOCIETIES AS KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES 109

since the same can be said about any part of the world. Rather, the
Middle East has been so continuously interlocked politically with
the West as to have become almost an appendage of the Western
power system’.10 AHD 2003 acknowledges the reality and effects of
these interventions (pp. 21–27). It seeks not only to connect the
region’s weak R&D capabilities with the deficiencies of Arab civil
society, but also to expose the way in which undemocratic Arab re-
gimes have colluded with Western governments and TNCs to rein-
force technological dependency.
Numerous authors have discussed the ‘rent culture’ that domi-
nates the Arab world.11 Its impact on Arab technological develop-
ment has been conspicuous, AHD 2003 argues, in the reliance of
governments upon Western consulting and contracting firms, which
afford limited opportunities for indigenous professionals to develop
technical expertise and commercial institutions. This socio-technical
dependence is now an integral part, as well as a logical conse-
quence, of the wider rentier culture.

SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

The governments of Arab nations could be considered more wor-

thy of respect, if they were able to deliver the prospect of a better
future. But this has not been the case. Their economies remain
weak; their civil societies, weaker still. What AHD 2003 makes
abundantly clear is that the Arab world’s economic, technological,
and cultural stagnation can be sheeted home to the political culture
of its rulers, aided and abetted by their Western supporters.
Despite a staggering investment in infrastructure of $3000 billion
over twenty years, average GNP per capita growth in Arab coun-
tries has remained stagnant.12 This abject lack of financial return
has been the combined product of corruption, systemic inefficien-
cies, uneconomic contracts, and showcase projects that have added
little or no economic or social value. Wherever the oil and other
rent dollars went, few have been invested in the technological and
social infrastructure essential to the running of a modern ‘knowl-

10
L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game
(London: I.B. Tauris, 1984), 5.
11
See, for example, Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani (eds.), The Rentier State (London:
Croom Helm, 1987).
12
A.B. Zahlan, ‘Arabs and the Technological Challenge: A World without Borders’,
Al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi, 180 (1994), 98–112 (in Arabic).
110 A.B. ZAHLAN

edge society’. For example, average Internet penetration in the re-

gion is only 2.6%, as contrasted with the world average of 10.5%.
Jordan leads the Arab world in investing 4.68% of its GNP in
information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure;
yet it ranks only sixty-third in the world in this sector.13 What
investment is made in ICT always comes in the form of imported
hardware and software solutions. The approach of Arab govern-
ments to ICT echoes their preference for importing technology
through turnkey contracts and foreign direct investment. Neither
strategy has led to an increase in local expertise.
The report’s authors are particularly blunt about the effects of
government control on academic positions. ‘Direct intervention by
security or political agencies in appointments to scientific, intellec-
tual, and literary positions is the most blatant form of [censorship]’,
they observe, ‘which of course disrupts knowledge development’
(p. 150). When launching AHD 2003, one of the report’s co-Direc-
tors went so far as to link the poor performance of Arab R&D cen-
tres – and their failure to contribute to development – to the
practice of appointing as directors only those with close ties to
ruling regimes.14
The censorship and travel restrictions imposed on scientists and
other professionals are just part of a spectrum of restrictions placed
on human rights. While most Arab states have signed international
conventions on human rights, the report reminds us that these
‘have neither entered the legal culture nor been incorporated in
substantive legislation’ (p. 152). Likewise, most Arab countries
have yet to implement international agreements on intellectual
property rights.
The emigration of professionals has been an inevitable corollary
of socio-economic-cultural stagnation and dependence upon Wes-
tern expertise. Arab societies have subsidized the education of
thousands of scientists, engineers, and doctors at home and abroad.
Yet, they have failed to provide appropriate jobs, or – most impor-
tant – opportunities to contribute to the development of their soci-
eties. This has resulted in a massive brain drain over the past
forty years. To take just one example: between 1998 and 2000, at
least 15,000 Arab medical doctors emigrated, mainly to Europe and
North America. This figure is equivalent to the total number of

13
UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Regional Profile of the Infor-
mation Society in Western Asia (Beirut: UNESCWA, 2003).
14
Interview with Rima Khalaf Hunaidi (in Arabic), Ashark al-Awsat, 11 November 2003, 10.
 ARAB SOCIETIES AS KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES 111

doctors available to staff all Arab medical schools and teaching

hospitals. What the brain drain demonstrates is that the Arab
world’s shortage of technological and professional expertise has
been a consequence, not a cause, of its stagnant development.
Unless conditions change dramatically, there is no reason to be-
lieve that Arab investment in human capital will contribute any-
thing more to development than will expenditure on infrastructure.
Yet, the Arab world knew from its last great flowering of science
and learning 600 years ago what was required to inspire and nur-
ture its scholars. As the great philosopher Ibn Khaldun noted, ‘the
professions are perfected and become plenty when demand for
them increases’.15 It is a bitter irony that regimes so noted for their
inefficiency should be so extraordinarily efficient in destroying those
elements of civil society so vital to their development.
Based on its litany of the shortcomings of R&D, indigenous
innovation, and development in the Arab World, AHD 2003 con-
cludes by outlining what it sees as the ‘five pillars’ required to sup-
port a knowledge society (pp. 163–176):

1. Introducing freedom of opinion, speech, and assembly;

2. Disseminating high quality education;
3. Indigenizing science, universalizing research and development,
and keeping up with the information age;
4. Shifting rapidly towards knowledge-based production; and
5. Establishing an authentic, broadminded, and enlightened Arab
general knowledge model.

The report avoids venturing an opinion as to how these objec-

tives might be achieved as long as Arab political culture is domi-
nated by its current patrons. AHD 2003 does not provide a
complete road map for overcoming the development crisis in the
Arab world. It does, however, draw attention to causes and conse-
quences, and we join its authors in the hope that better under-
standing will lead to a just and sustainable resolution.

15
For extensive references to Ibn Khaldun’s observations on this point, see: Ahmad
Y. al-Hassan and A.B. Zahlan, ‘Epilogue’, in A.Y. al-Hassan, Maqbul Ahmed, and A.Z.
Iskander (eds.), The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Part II: Technology and Applied
Sciences (Paris: UNESCO, 2001), vol. 2, 646.
112 A.B. ZAHLAN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A.B. Zahlan is an independent science policy consultant. Formerly

a professor of physics at the American University of Beirut, he has
published extensively in the fields of chemical physics, science and
technology policy, and the history of technology in the Arab
World. His latest book is Science and Technology in the Arab
World: Progress without Change (Beirut, 1999).

74 Oakwood Court
W14 8JF
London
UK
E-mail: Zahlan@compuserve.com