Consideraciones para la formulación del plan de expansión

As generally described above, the analysis produced in this paper will be

conducted in three separate steps. First, a general assessment of the effectiveness of each pre-revolution government will be provided. This portion of the analysis will be

executed with the least rigor, and is included only to determine a baseline for the analysis to follow. The main two sections will be accomplished by addressing five questions. The answers found will provide the evidence required to answer the research question as applied to the specific circumstances of each country. The first four questions comprise the second portion of the analysis and will determine the critical areas of pre-revolution government ineptitude. These are: (1) which factors are most important in creating economic growth for each country based upon its stage of development? (2) Which areas are the most important to fostering an environment conducive to entrepreneurship for each country based on its development stage? (3) Which factors are the most important to economic stage advancement for each country based on its current development stage?

Finally, (4) in which of these identified areas of importance did the pre-revolution governments underperform as compared to countries at a similar stage of development and/or regional associational group? This will provide a roadmap of key areas for the incoming governments of each country to focus upon in order to spur economic growth and facilitate entrepreneurial-based remedies to economic issues in the post-revolution states.

The final stage of the analysis will assess the recent condition of each area identified as lacking in order to create a logic explaining the poor performance of each

24 For example, the factor analysis for Egypt might find that 11 different variables from the combined data set are measuring governmental performance in some way. The discriminant analysis might find four different factors identified as critical for advancement from Group 2 (Egypt’s current WEF classification) to Group 3. Of these four critical factors, two of them are among the 11 that are measuring government.

These two factors can then be compared to other groups and potentially be identified as areas upon which the new government should focus, should they be found to be underperforming, or even performing in-line with similar countries.

economy. This will ultimately find an answer to: (5) based on an assessment of pre-revolution government performance in the identified critical fields, how did these variables interrelate to form vicious cycles of economic ineptitude? While the veracity and sourcing of the numbers that will be relied upon is contentious and undoubtedly tell only a portion of the story, these are the best sources of information available and are used extensively throughout economic research. Use of these datasets is only one method of producing evidence identifying critical governmental focus areas, but is required for the form of analysis upon which this paper will rely.

The first portion of the analysis will, through a comparison of “expectation

metrics” such as per capita GDP and foreign aid via direct investment with measurements of human development described by education, infrastructure and healthcare metrics, determine a baseline of pre-revolution governmental performance. The validity of the results produced by an analysis such as this is somewhat dependent upon the degree to which the unique circumstances of a country are manifest within the numbers used.

While this is a matter of debate, it is my contention that the macroeconomic metrics indicating the level of advancement a country should have, when viewed over time, encapsulate the historical circumstances unique to that country, and are conveyed therein.

Therefore, if compared to the more pragmatic assessments of the conditions of the populace within a country (described by human development metrics), a general picture of the effectiveness of government—complete with context unique to that country—is revealed.

The next portion of this study will be accomplished by conducting an analysis comparing the performance of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt in key metrics to the average performance of countries in the same region as well as those at the same stage of development. To achieve this, the results of the factor and discriminant analyses of the development groupings in which each country is a member will be utilized to determine the metrics upon which a comparison should be made. These metrics are thereby specific to each country based upon its development level. To identify particular areas in which the pre-revolution governments inhibited progress, the relative strength in indicators that showed strong associational links with growth, entrepreneurship or stage advancement

compared to similarly developed economies as well as regional competitors will be determined. From this analysis, the particular areas of governance and policy that were limiting in each country will be derived, which will ultimately provide areas of focus for both the incoming governments and the international community in an attempt to increase prosperity through the fostering of firm creation and growth within each country.

Finally, an evaluation of the condition of each identified area of underperformance in the pre-Arab Spring environment will be conducted. This brief examination of the factors found to have been most constraining will ultimately illuminate each country’s economic vicious cycle, and will depict the areas in which improvement may transform that cycle into a virtuous one.

II. AN ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES