Financing urban development and municipal resources, in relation to migrations, urbanisation and poverty

Research note presented to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA). It aims at setting a historical and economic framework for the debate on decentralisation and on the role of the finance of local authorities in the Middle East area.

It highlights the socio-political particular features of the area both internally (segmentation) and externally (the acuteness of the renewed confrontation between “the east and the West”) as well as the specific effects of the oil rents on socioeconomic regulation.