Category: douglasr

What, in your view, are the most important factors that have challenged or continue to challenge the continuation of monarchical rule in MENA?  Monarchies in MENA rely on the maintenance of familial networks and cronyistic relations throughout different sections of the government in dynastic arrangements while political liberalization and social mobilization may be used in…

Rents accrued to governments in MENA mean the country’s ruling elite are not beholden to a tax-paying public. This anti-democratic effect of rents is attached to how these rent-receiving governments administer taxation. In many cases, a country may not need to levy taxes on its citizens, or in other cases, it can distribute resource revenues…

Lisa Anderson’s article tackles the question of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa and why political scientists have had difficulties in explaining the failure of democracy to spread and the persistence of authoritarian regimes to survive in the region. Anderson begins by describing the often flawed framing of the study of Middle Eastern…