The possibility of change in a rentier state: the case of kuwait

This paper investigates the implications of the rentier theory thesis to the political changes in a rentier state. First of all, it is clear that in the current analyses of the Middle Eastern societies a dominant theme is the search for democratization. This paper challenges this view by arguing that such approach leads to the analytical (and sometimes practical) dead end. To investigate the processes in the Middle East, we should direct our focus to regime stability without having democracy prerequisites involved in our analysis. The theory of a rientier state describes the state-society relations as dismissing the importance o taxation. Thus, receiving huge amounts of external rent, the regime is autonomous from the society. This will prevent any changes in the future, if no fiscal crisis occurs. Fiscal crisis may deter the autonomy of the regime and thus provoke the change in politics. It is clear that although useful, such view obscures the importance of internal changes in the regime. The Kuwait case study reveals that some groups (merchants) of the society were important before the oil. Contrary to the rentier state thesis, they were not coopted by the wealth provided by the regime. Moreover, other groups were supported by the ruling family to counterbalance the strength of the merchants. In the context of the fiscal and other external crises the interplay between these groups and the regime were vital to regime legitimacy as such. The analysis refutes the hypothesis that fiscal crisis leads to the efforts of society to change the regime