Many states in MENA suffer from an apparent paradox in that they are seen as illegitimate in the eyes of their people yet, at the same time, they tend to be large, interventionist states. Both aspects of this paradox can be explained by the status of many MENA states as rentier states. Rentier economies create a state that is disjointed from its populace. While this independence can make the state stronger in resisting the will of its people, it disincentivizes the state from trying to maintain its legitimacy.
In rentier states, the vast majority of the state's budget is funded by external rent such as oil export revenue or foreign military aid as are common in MENA. Because of the abundance of revenue that comes from external rent, these states collect very little, if any, taxes from their citizens; the gathering of revenue in these states is a process that is uninvolved with the states' citizens. This independence means that the state does not rely on its people for funding and can spend its money independent of the will of its people. Since there is no taxation, there is no representation of the people in rentier states.
For this reason, the social contract between the people and the state is broken. The people are reliant on the state for security, social services, and infrastructure, but the state is reliant on the people for nothing. The social contract in rentier states is not negotiated between the people and the state, but rather the state negotiates within itself, between elites. Occasionally, counter-elites such as local leaders have a small say in this, but they can be easily paid off to support the state with money collected from rent. This skewed social contract makes a state that solely serves the interests of the government elites as the government has no incentive to support the people outside of the bare minimum necessary to prevent a mass uprising. The government has little incentive to serve the interests of the people; the rentier states only driving motivation is self-preservation which includes the appeasement of the government elites essential to maintaining the state and sustaining the channels necessary for the collection of external rent.
Because these states do not act with respect for the interests of their people, they are seen as illegitimate. However, this does not affect the ability of the rentier state to rule as it is entirely independent of the people. States financed primarily by the laying of taxes on its citizens do not have this luxury. Most states are dependent on their legitimacy in their right to rule, but rentier states are indifferent to legitimacy. Not only do rentier states tend to be less legitimate, they are entirely unconcerned with their legitimacy since it is not something that they are reliant on to maintain their power.
I think your point about there being no incentive for state's to maintain legitimacy is incredibly crucial and something that people often times forget about. The disconnect between the citizens and their government not only ripens the opportunity for dissent and rebellion among the people but also allows the state to feel secure in their power. When the state has no incentive to maintain it's legitimacy and make the people happy, it creates tension among the populace. The government becomes lazy to an extent and this creates further discontent. Some authoritarian leaders of the past were very charismatic and almost convinced their people that what they were doing was beneficial and good. A lot of MENA state leaders do not even attempt to do this. So, it is not only the lack of representation that stirs social movement in the region but more so the lack of effort a state puts in to convincing the people that they should stay in power.
ReplyDeleteI think another point that is noteworthy, perhaps as an outlier,is that some rentier states actually have legitimacy with their people. The tribal monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula almost completely fit the template of rentier states, yet they have legitimacy via long-established tribal bonds. The ruling families in this region lack a social contract with their people from a western perspective, but have loyalty from at least some part of their population due to their perceived legitimacy to rule via the historical and in some cases religious context of the region.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really interesting point that I hadn't considered before. I guess the problem for the state then becomes that the people hold allegiance to the tribal leaders over the state, so if the tribal leaders decide to cut ties with the state because of issues with governance or the failure of the rentier system to provide them with promised government services and public goods, then the state could potentially collapse. While this situation is definitely better than complete illegitimacy, it isn't stable either.
DeleteA good example of this is Kuwait, which at one point was referred to as a “welfare state” due to the amount of money that the government was handing out without expecting anything in return. This can get dangerous when it gets too out of hand
ReplyDeletebecause you create a system where work does not equal reward and where the citizens of a state relay on that state for everything, and the state relies on them for nothing. In Kuwait especially, we saw them bringing in slave labor from poorer countries around the region to do the jobs that its citizens refused to, as they didn’t always need to work due to their stipends.