Economic Barriers to Democratization in MENA

Abstract

The literature on regime change in the MENA region had claimed the occurrence of political liberalization and democratization during the 1990s, foreseeing a transition from the dominant authoritarianism in the region to politically more liberal regimes. These analyses neglect the state of permanent authoritarian political regimes with the centralized economic power and their role as periphery states in the world system. In this paper, we have reassessed the existing literature on regime change in the MENA region taking into account the economic and political impacts of rentier economies, with a close look at the countries in the region where popular uprisings took place to overthrow authoritarian leaders during the first half of 2011. We have followed Schlumberger's (2002) method of classification and comparative approach in order to pinpoint a correlation between the authoritarian regime's economic power based on resource allocation, its political dominance and the leaders' role in neo-liberal global political economy.