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Explaining Middle Eastern Authoritarianism

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  • Marcus Noland

    (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Abstract

Arab political regimes are both unusually undemocratic and unusually stable. A series of nested statistical models are reported to parse competing explanations. The democratic deficit is comprehensible in terms of lack of modernization, British colonial history, neighborhood effects, reliance on taxes for government finance, and the Arab population share. Interpretation of the last variable is problematic: It could point to some antidemocratic aspect of Arab culture (though this appears not to be supported by survey evidence), or it could be a proxy for some unobservable such as investment in institutions of internal repression that may not be culturally determined and instead reflect elite preferences. Hypotheses that did not receive robust support include the presence of oil rents, the status of women, conflict with Israel or other neighbors, or Islam. The odds on liberalizing transitions occurring are low but rising. In this respect the distinction between the interpretation of the Arab ethnic share as an intrinsic cultural marker and as a proxy for some unobservable is important—if the former is correct, then one would expect the likelihood of regime change to rise only gradually over time, whereas if it is the latter, the probabilities may exhibit much greater temporal variability.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcus Noland, 2005. "Explaining Middle Eastern Authoritarianism," Working Paper Series WP05-5, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp05-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Tausch, Arno & Heshmati, Almas, 2009. "Asabiyya: Re-Interpreting Value Change in Globalized Societies," IZA Discussion Papers 4459, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Tausch, Arno & Ghymers, Christian, 2011. "Los católicos globales. El primer sondeo global del catolicismo mundial según el “World Values Survey” y el “European Social Survey” [Global Catholics. The first global opinion survey of global Cat," MPRA Paper 33228, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Tausch, Arno, 2015. "Hofstede, Inglehart and beyond. New directions in empirical global value research," MPRA Paper 64282, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 11 May 2015.
    5. John C. Anyanwu, 2018. "Empirical Analysis of Key Drivers of Gender Equality in Tertiary Education Enrolment in Africa," International Journal of Economics and Financial Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 4(7), pages 197-213, 07-2018.
    6. Mohamad Al-Ississ & Ishac Diwan, 2016. "Individual Preferences for Democracy In the Arab World Explaining the Gap," Working Papers 981, Economic Research Forum, revised Mar 2016.
    7. Arye Hillman, 2007. "Economic and security consequences of supreme values," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 259-280, June.
    8. Mohamad Al-Ississ & Ishac Diwan, 2016. "Preference for Democracy in the Arab World," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 16-26.
    9. Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 2011. "Political Instrumentalization of Islam and the Risk of Obscurantist Deadlock," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 243-260, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    democracy; Middle East; Islam; regime change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

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