Unemployment rates in the Middle Eastand North Africa (MENA) region are among the highest in theworld, especially for young graduates. Policyrecommendations to date in the field of governance forprivate sector policymaking have been too general and tooremoved from concrete, actionable policy outcomes. Thisreport presents, for the first time to fill this policy andoperational gap by answering the following question: whatgood governance features should be instilled in the designof economic policies and institutions to help shield themfrom capture, discretion, and arbitrary implementation? Thereport presents an innovative conceptual framework thatencapsulates the governance features that can shieldpolicies from capture, discretion, and arbitrary enforcementthat limits competition. Based on this framework, acheck-list of policy features in a wide range of policyareas relevant to private sector development policy ispresented, notably in terms of: (i) the process ofpolicy-making (ex-ante); (ii) the actual policies,regulations, and their implementation (for example, businessregulations, procurement, financing, trade); and (iii)competition policy and other attributes like open-businessand transparency measures that help identify, and prevent ordeter anti-competitive market behavior and outcomes(ex-post). The report benchmarks eight countries along theframework and checklist of indicators, pointing, for eachcountry, to policy gaps and poor governance features thatmake these countries prone to capture and discretion. Thereport offers a menu of operational and technicalentry-points to engage the capture agenda in a concrete way,one that may be more politically tractable in some of theclient countries.