Download or read book Obstacles to Innovation in Rentier Economies written by Dania Thafer and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Arab Spring shook governments throughout the Middle East in the early 2010s, youth activism has increased with simmering tensions over corruption, obstacles to economic empowerment, and the deteriorating welfare state as states across the Gulf region witness their youth majorities evolve into a working-age population. This opportunity to capitalize on this age structure and increase economic productivity is an exigent matter of both political and economic stability in the Gulf rentier states along with the broader Middle East. With the wealth of the Gulf States based largely on hydrocarbon resources, these states share a unique economic situation, and often are termed "rentier economies." The resulting institutional ecosystem is often extractive by design and undermines innovation at its core. Thus, the capacity of the state to attain a demographic dividend- a sweet spot in the age structure that can be the highest opportunity for economic productivity-will be limited for decades to come if not framed by the appropriate institutional design and policies that allow for innovation-led development. Theoretically, the dependency on hydrocarbons creates distinct interaction between the institutional environment of the economy and the political logic of stakeholders such as the business elite and the labor force. In this context, this dissertation's question is: How does the institutional environment of state-business relations affect the necessary economic reform that fosters innovation needed for rentier economies to convert youth bulges into demographic dividends? This dissertation has three primary arguments. First, that rentier economies' institutional characteristics and market dominance by elites can stifle innovation, which consequently undermines prospects of achieving the demographic dividend. Through a cross-national quantitative analysis, the results indicate that rentier economies generally have a negative relationship with innovation, but that institutional quality and design can drive successful innovation in these economies. Second, by applying a historical institutional approach, this study explains how rentier economies originated from particular socio-political antecedents and were influenced by various power brokers in the pre-oil era economies, impacting the institutional structure that undergirds the politics of economic reform. This historical arrangement spurred differing levels of business elite dominance in the economy and therefore caused variance in the level of state-led capitalism across the three states- Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. In evaluating the histories of these three case studies, one main variable emerges that influenced different institutional development pathways-economic diversification. Diversification was a driving force behind the trajectory and influence of merchants on the private sector's institutional development, and that elite roles have affected contemporary political obstacles for innovation-led economic development. Third, in the current context, the institutional arrangements of rentier states, the state with the highest level of centralized state-led capitalism and lowest level of business elite dominance is more empowered to realize the innovation-led economic development necessary to successfully attain the demographic dividend.Existing currents of thinking on the literature on the resource curse, rentier economies, and the demographic dividend have failed to highlight the connection between political forces and the economic policies that affect societies with youth bulges. A central goal of mixed-methods research is to illuminate this gap and to point to alternative strategies to make the most of an extraordinary moment of opportunity that may only arise once for decades to come.
Download or read book Political Elites and Economic Development in Rentier States written by Adewale Michael Aderemi and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Political Economy of the Resource Curse written by Andrew Rosser and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a critical survey of the literature on the "resource curse", focusing on three main questions: (i) are natural resources bad for development?; (ii) what causes the resource curse?; and, (iii) how can the resource curse be overcome? In respect of these questions, three observations are made. First, while the literature provides considerable evidence that natural resource abundance is associated with various negative development outcomes, this evidence is by no means conclusive. Second, existing explanations for the resource curse do not adequately account for the role of social forces or external political and economic environments in shaping development outcomes in resource abundant countries, nor for the fact that, while most resource abundant countries have performed poorly in developmental terms, a few have done quite well. Finally, recommendations for overcoming the resource curse have not generally taken into account the issue of political feasibility.
Download or read book Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents written by Balihar Sanghera and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains and evaluates today’s economic, political, social and ecological crises through the lens of rentier capitalism and countermovements in Central Asia. Over the last three decades the rich and powerful have increased their wealth and political power to the detriment of social and environmental well-being. But their activities have not gone unchecked. Grassroots activism has resisted the harmful and damaging effects of the neoliberal commodification of things. Providing a much-needed theorisation of the moral economy and politics of rent, this book offers in-depth case studies on finance, real estate and natural resources in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The authors show the mechanisms of rent extraction, their moral justifications and legitimacy, and social struggles against them. This book highlights the importance of class relations, state-countermovement interactions and global capitalism in understanding social and economic dynamics in Central Asia. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in political economy, development studies, sociology, politics and international relations.
Download or read book Are Resources a Curse written by Andrea Gawrich and published by Verlag Barbara Budrich. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy as a Curse The analysis of rentierism in Post-soviet states, which this book presents, underscores the need for further research as rentier state concepts have mainly been applied to “older” rentier states like African, Latin American and Arab countries. An important contribution to a topical discussion. During the last 30 years, many resource-rich countries have experienced economic and political stagnation (“resource curse”). They have developed deficient political systems in which the process of modern state formation is being undercut (“rentier state”) as well as economic structures in which sectors that provide strong incentives for the accumulation of physical and human capital are under-represented (“Dutch disease”). This is very much the same in many of the post-Soviet states with high resource incomes since the mid 1990s. These incomes present opportunities for reducing poverty and promoting economic growth. But instead of taking advantage of these opportunities many of them present authoritarian regimes with high levels of corruption, low political freedom and rent-seeking elites. The book gives a detailed analysis of rentierism in Post-soviet states.
Download or read book Dead Ends of Transition written by Michael Dauderstädt and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2006 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After war, many countries, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the transition to a democratic market economy extremely difficult. This failure to thrive, Dead Ends of Transition demonstrates, is often the result of national reliance on foreign aid. Rentier states, the contributors to this study argue, have few incentives to respond to the needs of their societies. Taking a closer look at the policies of rentier economies, this book further identifies new ways in which these countries and their international partners could work together to ease the critical transition to democracy.
Download or read book Rents to Riches written by Naazneen Barma and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rents to Riches> focuses on the political economy of the detailed decisions that governments make at each step of the natural resource management (NRM) value chain. Many resource-dependent developing countries pursue seemingly shortsighted and suboptimal policies when extracting, taxing, and investing resource rents. The book contextualizes these micro-level outcomes with an emphasis on two central political economy dimensions: the degree to which governments can make credible intertemporal commitments to both resource developers and citizens, and the degree to which governments and inclined to turn resource rents into public goods. Almost 1.5 billion people live in the more than 50 World Bank client countries classified as resource-dependent. A detailed understanding of the way political economy characteristics affect the NRM decisions made in these countries by governments, extractive developers, and society can improve the design of interventions to support welfare-enhancing policy making and governance in the natural resource sectors. Featuring case study work from Africa (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria), East Asia and Pacific (the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Timor-Leste), and Latin America and the Caribbean (Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Trinidad an dTobago_, the book provides guidance for government clients, domestic stakeholders, and development partners committed to transforming natural resource into sustainable development riches.
Download or read book The Rentier State written by Hazem Beblawi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, first published in 1987, is devoted to a discussion of interrelations of the economic base with the cultural, social and political structures, and of its impact on the state. The ‘rentier states’ of the Middle East, which derive a substantial part of their revenue from foreign sources in the form of rent, largely oil revenues, face the same basic problem, the challenge of transforming their economies to give increased strength to productive activity and rely on its progress to increase state revenue from domestic sources. This book, Volume Two in the Nation, State and Integration in the Arab World research project carried out by the Istituto Affari Internazionali, examine the issue of the modernization of rentier states’ public finance, which may well entail important modifications in their domestic politics.
Download or read book The Rentier State in Africa written by Douglas Andrew Yates and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a detailed study of the political and economic condition of the Republic of the Gabon which focuses on the years of the oil boom (1975-1985).
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State written by Stephan Leibfried and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 1038 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of transformations of the state, from its origins in different parts of the world and different time periods to its transformations since World War II in the advanced industrial countries, the post-Communist world, and the Global South. Leading experts in their fields, from Europe and North America, discuss conceptualizations and theories of the state and the transformations of the state in its engagement with a changing international environment as well as with changing domestic economic, social, and political challenges. The Handbook covers different types of states in the Global South (from failed to predatory, rentier and developmental), in different kinds of advanced industrial political economies (corporatist, statist, liberal, import substitution industrialization), and in various post-Communist countries (Russia, China, successor states to the USSR, and Eastern Europe). It also addresses crucial challenges in different areas of state intervention, from security to financial regulation, migration, welfare states, democratization and quality of democracy, ethno-nationalism, and human development. The volume makes a compelling case that far from losing its relevance in the face of globalization, the state remains a key actor in all areas of social and economic life, changing its areas of intervention, its modes of operation, and its structures in adaption to new international and domestic challenges.
Download or read book Local political elites and economic change written by Alan Joel Stern and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Contesting the Iranian Revolution written by Pouya Alimagham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-19 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.
Download or read book The Political Economy of India s Growth Episodes written by Sabyasachi Kar and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘This book is different from most other attempts to understand the politics of Indian economic development. Breaking down the last 65+ years of Indian development into several episodes of growth, it provides a rich set of insights into the political economy of the Indian development process and is a valuable addition to the literature.’ –Pranab Bardham, University of California, Berkeley, USA ‘Sustained economic growth in the world's largest democracy is critically important to human well-being, but the ups and downs of growth in India are not well-understood. This book provides a fresh and insightful approach to understanding what drives the starts of booms and the onset of slowdowns.’ –Lant Pritchett, Harvard University, USA ‘This is a little book with big arguments. The authors' explanation of the changing character of the deals done between political and business elites makes for the most original contribution to studies of the political economy of Indian development since Pranab Bardhan's seminal work of the early 1980s’ –John Harriss, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada This book moves beyond the usual economic analysis of the Indian growth story and provides a fresh perspective on the determinants of growth episodes in post-independence India, based on its political economy. Using a robust and novel technique, the authors identify four such episodes during this period. The first, running from the 1950s to 1992, was mostly characterized by economic stagnation, with a nascent recovery in the eighties. The second, covering the period 1993 to 2001, witnessed the first growth acceleration in the economy. A second acceleration ran from 2002 to 2010. The fourth and final episode started with the slowdown in 2010 and continues to this day. The book provides a theoretical framework that focuses on rent-structures, institutions and the polity, and demonstrates how changes in these can explain the four growth episodes. Kar and Sen argue that the transitions from one growth episode to another can be explained by the bi-directional relationship between growth outcomes and institutional arrangements, and by the manner in which institutional arrangements and their transitions are determined by the political bargains struck between the elite groups in Indian society.
Download or read book Economic Development and Political Reform written by Bradley Louis Glasser and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work addresses critical trends in the Middle Eastern political economy during the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that external capital has had a decisive impact on economic and political development in the region, demonstrating that the Middle Eastern states lacking substantial exogenous revenues - including oil and foreign aid - have experienced severe fiscal crises and have been forced to pursue neo-liberal economic strategies. By contrast, those states with greater exogeonous resources have undergone milder economic crises and developed more populist economic models.
Download or read book Rentier Capitalism written by Shahid Ahmed and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book North Africa written by Dirk J. Vandewalle and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years after independence, North African countries face a number of local, regional and international difficulties that challenge the power and leadership of local states within the region. Growing contestation against the privileges of state elites, the economic consolidation and growing politicization of migrant communities within the European Union, the failure to create successful regional organizations within North Africa and a powerful backlash against the cultural, political and economic pretensions of once seemingly invincible states has brought the region to the edge of potentially long-term instability. This book is the first wide-ranging re-evaluation of development in North Africa in almost thirty years. Paying little attention to issues of culture and claims of exceptionalism that have long marked analyses of the region, the majority of the authors in the collection elaborate their arguments about development in the region within a framework of comparative political economy that focuses on issues like the role of power and autonomy of the state, state-society relations, the uniqueness of rentier development and the unique, historically-created relations of sensitivity and vulnerability between North Africa as a peripheral region and its more powerful neighbour, the European Union.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization written by James Manor and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly all countries worldwide are now experimenting with decentralization. Their motivation are diverse. Many countries are decentralizing because they believe this can help stimulate economic growth or reduce rural poverty, goals central government interventions have failed to achieve. Some countries see it as a way to strengthen civil society and deepen democracy. Some perceive it as a way to off-load expensive responsibilities onto lower level governments. Thus, decentralization is seen as a solution to many different kinds of problems. This report examines the origins and implications decentralization from a political economy perspective, with a focus on its promise and limitations. It explores why countries have often chosen not to decentralize, even when evidence suggests that doing so would be in the interests of the government. It seeks to explain why since the early 1980s many countries have undertaken some form of decentralization. This report also evaluates the evidence to understand where decentralization has considerable promise and where it does not. It identifies conditions needed for decentralization to succeed. It identifies the ways in which decentralization can promote rural development. And it names the goals which decentralization will probably not help achieve.
