nichocam

The unusual size of the oil rents causes the most political and social issues in MENA. Some reasons for this are that the governments in our region rule heavily through authoritarianism. We have seen how this type of ruling usually leads to a balance of two things: legitimacy and coercion. Time and time again we see how when the governments in our region get huge sums of money (governments that are used to coercion more) they tend to spend a lot of it on keeping their people in their place even if they give some to the people they may not really spend it on what the people want.

Now if the government decides to give the money to the people and be true to their intentions things come down to that there is all this money: should it be distributed evenly, and who gets more money if not, how could you really make sure you are doing everything the people want since there are conflicting ideas among the population. If this is done incorrectly you could easily lose your legitimacy and end up using that money for coercion more. This could easily be an argument that outside factors may affect how ell rents work more than just the amount. Maybe it’s the amount and outside factors.

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     Anderson has some issues with how political scientists try to make sense of Middle East politics. One issue she has is political scientists making strong ideas on politics in the Middle East because they haven’t lived there yet. She goes on to explain why this may be the reason they are having a hard time fully understanding it. On page 19 of the document, she states that “American political scientists who ventured into the Middle East may have felt marginalized professionally, but their local counterparts often lost not only their scientific authority and policy platform but also their personal freedom”(Anderson, 2006). This issue is due to seeing and being under the influence of politics would give a very different perspective of them.

       The other thing I noticed while reading is how some scientist would make generalizations based on their past knowledge of governments whether it be democratization or authoritarianism. This would lead to some false conclusions where scientists who work in the Middle East disagree with them. She explains that “The efforts to incorporate the Middle East in the project of establishing universal generalizations about politics through the lens of democratization had served neither the science of politics nor the study of the region particularly well”(Anderson, 2006). This explains that maybe we need to go into analyzing the politics of the Middle East on a clean slate and through a different lens than we have in the past.

Anderson, L. (2006, February 7). SEARCHING WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES: Studying … – Annual Reviews. SEARCHING WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES: Studying Democratization in the Middle East. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.072004.095345

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