Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics

Abstract

How can we make sense of Algeria's post-colonial experience – the tragedy of unfulfilled expectations, the descent into violence, the resurgence of the state? Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics explains why Algeria's domestic political economy unravelled from the mid-1980s, and how the regime eventually managed to regain power and hegemony. Miriam Lowi argues the importance of leadership decisions for political outcomes, and extends the argument to explain the variation in stability in oil-exporting states following economic shocks. Comparing Algeria with Iran, Iraq, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, she asks why some states break down and undergo regime change, while others remain stable, or manage to re-stabilise after a period of instability. In contrast with exclusively structuralist accounts of the rentier state, this book demonstrates, in a fascinating and accessible study, that political stability is a function of the way in which structure and agency combine.

Making sense of Arab labor markets: the enduring legacy of dualism

“…As oil prices recovered in the 2000s, there were clear attempts to re-establish the old bargains, with the greatest success in doing so in the oil-rich economies of the Gulf and in places like Algeria in North Africa (Lowi 2009). The regimes without ready access to plentiful mineral rents were forced to gradually renege on their side of the bargain but, besides resorting to greater repression, they tried to minimize the political fallout by protecting insiders and shifting the cost of adjustment to outsiders.…”

Los métodos mixtos de investigación para el análisis del cambio político en el Norte de África y Oriente Próximo

“…Julio 2020, pp. 145-167 Akbarzadeh, 2012;Shehata, 2012); dinámicas regionales y relaciones internacionales (Fawcett, 2013;Schwedler, 2013;Hinnebusch, 2015;Vatikiotis, 2015); corrupción política y clientelismo (Ruiz de Elvira et al, 2018; Kubbe y Varraich, 2019); explotación de recursos naturales (Lowi, 2011;Selvik y Utvik, 2015); activismo, redes sociales y resistencia digital (Khatib y Lust, 2014;Gunter et al, 2016;Wheeler, 2017); opinión pública (Tessler, 2011;Telhami, 2013); economía (Richards et al, 2013) y cuestiones de género (Moghadam, 2013).…”

Making Sense of Arab Labor Markets: The Enduring Legacy of Dualism

“…With downward pressure on oil prices in the second half of the 1980s and much of the 1990s, these authoritarian bargain social contracts eventually became fiscally unsustainable and came under severe pressure in a number of countries, especially the more populous oil producers, which had to increasingly resort to repression to maintain the political status quo (Soliman 2011, Ali andElbadawi 2012). As oil prices recovered in the 2000s, there were clear attempts to re-establish the old bargains, with the greatest success in doing so in the oil-rich economies of the Gulf and in places like Algeria in North Africa (Lowi 2009). The regimes without ready access to plentiful mineral rents were forced to gradually renege on their side of the bargain but, besides resorting to greater repression, they tried to minimize the political fallout by protecting insiders and shifting the cost of adjustment to outsiders.…”