Talk:Rentier state
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Interesting. Can someone include some examples of rentier states? Pelago 14:40, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Pretty much all of the middle eastern oil states; countries which export loads of oil, have negligable other industries of their own, and are pretty much exclusively military or royal dictatorships. -- Tom Anderson 2006-11-10 19:20 +0000
Why don't you try and start making the list? I'm sure it would be really useful. Let's see ... Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, ...
Jordan and Syria cannot be called rentier states. Luciani's definition stipulaltes (admittedly somewhat arbitraily) that a rentier state must accrue at least 40% of its income from rents. Neither of these states meet this criteria. Indeed, the analytical vlaue of the rentier state model (primarily the ability to allocate resources for little or nothing in return) does not apply to Syria and Jordan
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The rentier state theory is one of several explanations for the failure to develop of the middle eastern countries; there are others, but it's so long since i read about this stuff that i've forgotten them. It would be really good if we had a link from here to those other theories, or to a page like "political history of the middle east" or something. -- Tom Anderson 2006-11-10 19:20 +0000
[edit] Too Middle-East centric?
The article seems entirely focussed on talking about Rentier states in the context of the Middle East. Perhaps some historical examples would help? Also, it would be nice to have some perspective of how widely these ideas are accepted in the political science community as a whole. If 99% of political scientists think this theory is correct, then the article is probably okay, but if only 50% do, then the article needs to quote some counter-arguments. --61.214.155.14 (talk) 00:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
