Understanding Democratic Transitions in The Arab World

Ibrahim Elbadawi () and Samir Makdisi ()
Additional contact information
Ibrahim Elbadawi: Economic Research Forum, Cairo, And, Center for Global Development, Washington DC, USA
Samir Makdisi: The American University of Beirut

No 765, Working Papers from Economic Research Forum

Abstract: The recent Arab uprisings have forced a new trajectory of transitions to democracy from the long-reigning autocracies that have dominated this region. This paper analyzes the factors that underlie this transition, where we code ‘democratic transitions’ as a multi-year phenomenon. We find that rents from oil and other minerals are hindrance to democracy when managed by less than fully democratic regimes and that their corrosive influence is subject to threshold effects. Our results also suggest that home wars impede democratic transitions. Finally, we tested for four causative mechanisms that might explain how or when resource rents can constitute a drag on democratization, and that are also of high relevance to the Arab world. We show that resource rents are effective deterrents when they are deployed to create jobs or when the resource endowed country is located in a non-democratic or conflicting region. On the other hand, compared to resource transfers, political repression does not seem to be the first best option, especially for highly resource endowed countries.

Pages: 48
Date: 2013-09, Revised 2013-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published by The Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Downloads: (external link)
http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/765.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/765.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/765.pdf)
http://bit.ly/2lOjUwR (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erg:wpaper:765

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Research Forum Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Namees Nabeel ().