From introduction: "There is an overwhelming agreement that a deficit of freedom undermines human development. As is also well known, there is a dramatic gap between the levels of democracy in Arab countries and the rest of the world1. In particular, none of the 16 Arab majority countries has a democratically elected government. At the same time, the combined GDP of all Arab countries is less than that of Spain, and labor productivity in these countries dropped between I960 and 1990, while it soared elsewhere in the world. Even Africa outperformed the Arab region in rates of economic growth, etc."(...)