Rentierism in the Middle East and North Africa

Rentier states and rentierism are common in the Middle East and North Africa, however it is not solely because of oil rents that authoritarian regimes are so prevalent there. Such a unilateral explanation of anything could be characterized as a vast oversimplification. There are other states in the world that have oil rents of comparable size to those found in the Middle East and North Africa. Norway’s oil rents were last measured in 2012 at 9.4% of the country’s GDP. Qatar’s oil rents accounted for 12.1% of its GDP in 2012. The difference is that oil was not discovered in Norway until 1969, more than 150 years after the constitution of Norway was adopted. The Norwegian government and economy were already well established and stable at this point. Oil was discovered in the Middle East in Persia in 1908 and in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 carved up the Middle East between French and British influence into mandates, which differed minimally from colonies. The current state system in the Middle East and North Africa is largely a result of this agreement and others made in the years surrounding the first world war. National borders and state borders do not match up as a result of this lack of self-determination, which is one of many factors contributing to instability in the region. The states in the Middle East and North Africa are all very young. Many of these states did not achieve independence from Western influence until after World War II, and in some cases not until the 1960s and 70s, as in the cases of Algeria and Iran, respectively.

European influence in the Middle East and North Africa may be one of the factors contributing to the prominence of authoritarian regimes there, specifically monarchies. European powers, especially the UK and France set up monarchies in their mandates in the Middle East after World War I. Much as the United States strives to spread democracy across the globe, these monarchical states set up governments in their own image to some extent. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 also contributed in large part to the current state of affairs in the Middle East.

The interaction of large oil rents in these states with such factors as European influence, existing instability, and existing authoritarian and monarchical regimes produces these “peculiarly pathological political outcomes.” At the time oil was discovered in the Middle East and North Africa, the mandate and colonial system was still in place and European influence maintained stability to some extent. After these states achieved independence at various points during the twentieth century, newly independent regimes had huge oil rents and new-found power without European powers keeping them closely in check.

A confluence of large oil rents, the mandate system and the resulting state system is largely responsible for the current state of the Middle East and North Africa. Some political scientists have asserted that the Middle East needs decades of interstate and intrastate war before it achieves a state system that matches national borders and overcomes the currently dominant political pathology. The European state system is mainly a result of centuries of war since the middle ages. This process of state formation was never allowed to happen in the Middle East and North Africa because of Western presence in the region.