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6 - Fueling Authoritarian Resilience

from Part III - The Impact of Contemporary Rents on Dictatorship and Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2023

Faisal Z. Ahmed
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

This chapter examines how oil wealth has fueled authoritarian resilience – dictatorship without significant outbreaks of civil war – in oil producers (petrostates) exposed to Muslim conquest. While the chapter’s analysis corroborates existing research that oil rents can hurt democracy, it makes four original contributions relevant for understanding why oil wealth has engendered authoritarian resilience in conquest petrostates. First, it identifies a tension in existing scholarship: the negative relationship between oil wealth and democracy but positive relationship between oil wealth and civil war, particularly in dictatorships. Second, this clarification is important in understanding why greater oil wealth in conquest petrostates has hurt democracy but has not fostered civil war. Third, the chapter introduces a new type of rent that is intricately tied to oil production in many conquest petrostates. The chapter argues that an implied security guarantee from the United States government has comprised an additional geopolitical rent which has augmented the military capacity of conquest petrostates to thwart insurgency. Finally, the chapter that oil wealth has not hindered a trajectory towards greater democracy in non-conquest petrostates.

Type
Chapter
Information
Conquests and Rents
A Political Economy of Dictatorship and Violence in Muslim Societies
, pp. 179 - 205
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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