Effects of Oil Rents

If oil rents produce peculiarly damaging political and social outcomes in MENA, is this due to the unusual size of those rents or to the interaction of those rents with other factors?

In the Middle East and North Africa the specific form of government income called rentierism is especially prevalent. Rentierism means that the state has control over a valuable natural resource that other countries want, which creates external income that is independent of the income from the the internal population. This form of governmental income creates an authoritarian form of government. The authoritarian government is not created due to the unusual size of the rents, instead it is due to the interaction of these rents with other factors. The key factor that interacts with the rents to create authoritarianism is how the government decides to spend its independent income. In most cases the government decides to spend a majority of this income on its military and police forces. When spending a huge amount of the income on a police force, the repression effect takes place. With this effect the government can control its population by having the police force intervene with any opposing viewpoints by the citizens and crush them. When this is the case, a Mukhaberat State is created, which is a government that uses internal security forces, usually secret police forces, to enforce the viewpoints that the governmental authorities hold. Also, along with the immense spending on police and military forces, the government tries to appease to its people by providing necessities to the citizens for free, like food and gasoline. By providing these bare essentials it keeps the population under control due to the fact that they pay very minimal taxes and are receiving more in return.