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Abstract
This paper examines rentier state theory (RST), and specifically “rentierism” as a more refined and nuanced variant of RST, arguing that while rentierism provides considerable utility in explaining the state-society relationships of the contemporary Arab states of the Persian Gulf, it is insufficient as a stand-alone explanation, and needs to be considered as a political dynamic of the state-society relationship, rather than as a structural explanation for the state itself, as early RST more ambitiously sought to do. Rentierism therefore needs to be utilized in combination with two other explanatory frameworks, neopatrimonialism and state capitalism. In effect, these are rentierism’s theoretical “siblings”: they sharpen a rentier analysis by providing greater nuance about how elite networks, business-government relations, and personalized politics operate and interact in the allocative settings of the Gulf, as well as illustrating both the scope and the limits of rentierism as an explanatory framework.
Notes
1 Gengler, Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf (2015).
2 Springborg, “GCC Countries as ‘Rentier States’ Revisited”, Middle East Journal 67.2 (2013), p. 301.
3 One example where this is done well is: Foley, The Arab Gulf States: Beyond Oil and Islam (2010).
4 The first piece to use the concept as it is used now was Mahdavy, “The Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: The Case of Iran”, Studies in Economic History of the Middle East, ed. Cook (1970), pp. 428–67. The concept only gained traction among scholars later, with the publication of Beblawi and Luciani (eds), The Rentier State: Nation, State and the Integration of the Arab World (1987). Thus, Beblawi and Luciani are most typically credited with developing the concept.
5 Gray, “A Theory of ‘Late Rentierism’ in the Arab States of the Gulf”, Center for International and Regional Studies Occasional Paper 7 (2011).
6 Gengler, Group Conflict and Political Mobilization, p. 153.
7 Among the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Kuwait is the most rentierist if this is measured by oil as a share of GDP or as a share of exports, and ranks lowest for export diversity. For rents as a share of government revenue, it falls around the middle of the six. See: International Monetary Fund (IMF), Economic Diversification in Oil-Exporting Arab Countries (2016), pp. 8, 10, 12–13.
8 Some cases where it is discussed in some detail include, among others, the mostly historical discussion in: Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the States in Saudi Arabia (2010); a brief discussion of the Saudi private sector’s role in: Niblock and Malik, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia (2007); and cases from Qaboos’s Oman in: Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (2009).
9 Bremmer was not the first to identify the dynamic, but was among the first to examine it as a global twenty-first century trend and to term it a new variety of state capitalism. For his main work on the subject see: Bremmer, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War between States and Corporations? (2010).
10 Gray, “A Theory of ‘Late Rentierism’”, pp. 34–5.
11 Both Luciani and Beblawi made such arguments; a good summary of the idea is provided in: Luciani, “Allocation vs. Production States: A Theoretical Framework”, The Arab State, ed. Luciani (Citation1990), pp. 70‒4.
12 Luciani, “Allocation vs. Production States”, pp. 75‒6.
13 On this question of rentierism and Kuwait, see: Herb, The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE (2014), pp. 9‒15, 60‒3, 158‒67, 206‒10; and Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (1995), pp. 109‒11, 178‒83, 201‒4.
14 As was argued in, for example, Luciani, “Allocation vs. Production States”, p. 76.
15 On the plan and others that followed from 1970 to 1985, see: Niblock and Malik, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia, pp. 52‒72.
16 Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf; Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (1997); Moore, Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Jordan and Kuwait (2004); and Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats.
17 As an example of a work that combines international relations and RST, see: Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (1994). There is a range of works that accept some basic validity with RST, but which argue that other approaches are also essential. As examples, see: Foley, The Arab Gulf States; and some of the pieces in: Al-Rasheed and Vitalis (eds), Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (2004).
18 Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern; Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (2010); Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (2010).
19 What follows is drawn from: Gray, “A Theory of ‘Late Rentierism’”.
20 On some of the economic points see, Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (2012); and, Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats, which refined the concepts of “state” and “society”.
21 See, for example: Fox, Mourtada-Sabbah, and al-Mutawa (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (2006); Marcel and Mitchell, Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East (2006).
22 Herb, The Wages of Oil, pp. 10–15.
23 Wehrey, Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings (2014), pp. 58–72.
24 Outlined in his posthumously published work: Weber, Economy and Society (1922; repr. 2017).
25 This has been widely noted, but see, for example: Mkandawire, “Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy of Economic Performance in Africa: Critical Reflections”, World Politics 67.3 (2015), pp. 563–612.
26 Eisenstadt, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism (1973).
27 Clapham, Third World Politics: An Introduction (1985), p. 48. This definition is quoted very widely; see for examples, among many: Almezaini, “Private Sector Actors in the UAE and Their Role in the Process of Economic and Political Reform”, Business Politics in the Middle East, ed. Hertog, Luciani, and Valeri (2013), p. 51; Mkandawire, “Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy”, p. 565.
28 The points that follow are partly taken from: Bank and Richter, “Neopatrimonialism in the Middle East and North Africa: Overview, Critique and Alternative Conceptualization”, presented at the GIGA workshop Neopatrimonialism in Various World Regions in Hamburg, Germany, 2010.
29 Schlumberger, “Structural Reform, Economic Order, and Development: Patrimonial Capitalism”, Review of International Political Economy 15.4 (2008), p. 626.
30 Erdmann and Engel, “Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered: Critical Review and Elaboration of an Elusive Concept”, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 45.1 (2007), pp. 106–8.
31 Schlumberger, “Structural Reform, Economic Order, and Development”, p. 626.
32 Heydemann, “Networks of Privilege: Rethinking the Politics of Economic Reform in the Middle East”, Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited, ed. Heydemann (Citation2004), pp. 1–34; Sassoon, Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics (2016), p. 114.
33 Herb, All in the Family, p. 15.
34 Schlumberger, “Structural Reform, Economic Order, and Development”, pp. 625–6.
35 Almezaini, “Private Sector Actors in the UAE”, pp. 50–9.
36 Herb, All in the Family, p. 15.
37 For a couple of more detailed examples, see: on social dynamics in the UAE, Rugh, The Political Culture of Leadership in the United Arab Emirates (2007), especially pp. 15–30 and 217–37; and on tribes and social forces in Qatar see: Crystal, “Tribes and Patronage Networks in Qatar”, Tribes and States in a Changing Middle East, ed. Rabi (2016), pp. 37–55.
38 The idea is widely argued in both scholarly and popular outlets, but was first outlined in Luciani, “Allocation vs. Production States”, p. 88.
39 Al-Dakhil, “Wahhabism as an Ideology of State Formation”, Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State, ed. Ayoob and Kosebalaban (2009), pp. 23–38.
40 See the lengthy discussion of this in Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, pp. 182–210.
41 Dessouki, “Social and Political Dimensions of the Historiography of the Arab Gulf”, Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture, ed. Davis and Gavrielides (1991), pp. 92–115.
42 Cooke, Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (2014). For specific examples from Qatar, see: Kamrava, Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (2013); Gray, Qatar: Politics and the Challenges of Development (2013).
43 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), pp. 177–91, cited and discussed in: Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (1977), pp. 166–8.
44 Patchett-Joyce, “GCC’s VAT Framework Takes Shape”, The National, 7 May 2017.
45 For more on these plans see: Hvidt, “Economic Diversification in GCC Countries: Past Record and Future Trends”, Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States Research Paper 27 (2013).
46 Hvidt, “Planning for Development in the GCC States: A Content Analysis of Current Development Plans”, Journal of Arabian Studies 2.2 (2012), pp. 189–207.
47 For the details of the strategy, see the main public summary document on it, Govt. Saudi Arabia, Vision 2030 (2016).
48 The Saudi government has spoken of raising $100 billion with the sale of five percent of the company, which would value it at approximately $2 trillion. Some analysts place a lower value on it, varying from $500 billion up to $1.5 trillion, but few seem willing to accept the $2 trillion figure or to assume that the sale will proceed at that price. On the sale and some scenarios for it, see for example: Wald, “5 Ways a Saudi Aramco IPO Could Play Out”, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2017.
49 For some historical context on state capitalism see: Kurlantzick, State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World (2016), pp. 49–63.
50 On the case of Egypt see: Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (1983), pp. 3–20; and on Syria see: Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria under Asad (1995), especially pp. 23–52.
51 Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, pp. 17–8.
52 On the East Asian “developmental state” see: Pempel, “The Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy”, The Developmental State, ed. Woo-Cumings (1999), pp. 137–81.
53 Maloney, “The Gulf’s Renewed Oil Wealth: Getting it Right This Time?”, Survival 50.6 (2008), p. 133.
54 Of his several works on the topic and using this term, Bremmer’s major piece is: The End of the Free Market. A number of other books have made similar points; for example, MacDonald and Lemco, State Capitalism’s Uncertain Future (2015); and Kurlantzick, State Capitalism.
55 This case is made in greater depth in: Gray, Qatar, pp. 10–1, 63–6, 67–70, 102–3.
56 Bremmer, The End of the Free Market, especially pp. 51–81.
57 Hvidt, “The Dubai Model: An Outline of Key Development-Process Elements in Dubai”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 41.3 (2009), pp. 397, 398, 412–3.
58 On this, see: Hertog, “Defying the Resource Curse: Explaining Successful State-Owned Enterprises in Rentier States”, World Politics 62.2 (2010), pp. 261–301; and Hertog, “Lean and Mean: The New Breed of State-Owned Enterprises in the Gulf Monarchies”, Industrialization in the Gulf: A Socioeconomic Revolution, ed. Seznec and Kirk (2011), pp. 17–29.
59 Bremmer, The End of the Free Market, pp. 63–5.
60 Hvidt, “The Dubai Model: An Outline of Key Development-Process Elements in Dubai”, p. 410.
61 Luciani, “From Private Sector to National Bourgeoisie: Saudi Arabian Business”, Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs, ed. Aarts and Nonneman (2005), p. 146.
62 Bremmer, The End of the Free Market, pp. 67–9.
63 Luciani, “From Private Sector to National Bourgeoisie”, pp. 144–81 passim.
64 Toksoz, “The GCC: Prospects and Risks in the New Oil Boom”, The Gulf Region: A New Hub of Global Financial Power, ed. Nugée and Subacchi (2008), p. 89.
65 For details see Gray, Qatar, pp. 67–70.
66 This, for example, is the case with Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), the country’s main petrochemicals firm, which is publicly traded but is still 70% state owned, as well as with various other firms such as the Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maʿaden), of which the state owns 50%, and the National Commercial Bank, among many others. See: Niblock and Malik, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia, pp. 26–7, 136, 218–20.
67 Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Arab Spring (2014), pp. 86–90.
68 This argument is made in general terms in: MacDonald and Lemco, State Capitalism’s Uncertain Future, pp. 101–29. On the case of Dubai, especially its use of soft power and economic power for security aims, see: Davidson, After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (2012), pp. 79–109; and some examples in: Krane, Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City (2009), especially pp. 151–95. On Qatar, see: Ulrichsen, Qatar and the Arab Spring, pp. 86–90; and Gray, Qatar, p. 210.
69 Yi-chong, “The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds”, The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds, ed. Yi-chong and Baghat (2010), pp. 7–16.
70 Gray, “A Theory of ‘Late Rentierism’”, p. 34.