Overview
MENA’s political history has left behind a spatial bias in favor of metropolitan areas. Many of the contemporary drivers of spatial bias go back to the colonial era. At independence, most of today’s MENA states were founded on belief in the state’s capacity to regulate social and economic relations. Governance under Ottoman and European rule was based on the development of strong central bureaucracies. Colonial tax systems encouraged a neglect of lagging regions and shifted a large share of tax revenues away from the provinces to the capital region. In the years immediately following independence, central administrations expanded, and power remained concentrated at the capital. In catering essentially to the metropolis, colonial management avoided redressing regional inequalities. Under both Ottoman rule and European colonization, states served as providers to the metropolis. In favoring resource extraction over economic development, the colonial
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