The Governance Deficit in the Middle East Region

This chapter focuses on two central concepts – human security and trust – as the core basis of a referential framework for assessing and re-imagining relations between MENA governments and their populations. The working hypothesis here is that one of the reasons why MENA countries have a governance deficit is precisely because of the embedded mistrust in Middle Eastern societies between rulers and those ruled. Trust is crucial as it avoids a “paralysing situation of ultimate uncertainty” and puts “social actors in the position to start a relationship” (Bachmann and Zaheer, 2006 : 394).
The core proposition of this chapter is that trust is an essential element allowing social actors to make specific assumptions about each other’s future behavior and hence reduce uncertainty and complexity which are so rife in relations between MENA governments and their populations.