Rents, Reform, and Authoritarianism in the Middle East* OLIVER SCHLUMBERGER Introduction That»oil hinders democracy«(Ross 2001) has become almost proverbial, and the Middle East and North Africa( mena ) seems to support this as­sumption and argument perfectly: It represents, first, the world’s most abundant reservoir of exportable mineral resources(oil and natural gas), and it is, second, the only world region that has not, over the past three decades, experienced systemic political transitions to democracy. How­ever, real world relations between international rent income as generated by oil and gas exports on the one hand and the type of political regime on the other are more complex than this; even a very casual international comparison demonstrates the validity of two empirical observations: a) high levels of rent income do not usually destroy existing democracies – that is, high levels of rent income are not sufficient to explain author­itarianism(Venezuela, Norway); b) high levels of rent income do not per se exclude the emergence of po­litical transitions to democracy(Mexico). Given the topic, the key questions dealt with here with regard to the Arab region are therefore: 1. How does the social and political context in Arab countries influence the impact of rent income? Or, from another perspective: How does the existence of rents and rent-seeking influence the mode of gover­nance? 2. Has rent-seeking been a determinant of economic and political devel­opment? How does the existence of significant rent income impact on economic reform and performance? While it seems impossible to answer both questions in a short contribu­tion, it should be possible at least to address, albeit cautiously, the inter­* The author is a senior research officer at the German Development Institute( die ), Bonn. ipg 2/2006 Schlumberger, Rents, Reforms and Authoritarianism in the Middle East 43