Oil wealth and authoritarianism: Algeria in the Arab Spring

Authors

  • Lala Muradova Huseynova UNESCO Chair of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

Keywords:

oil wealth, authoritarianism, rentier state, democracy, Algeria, Arab Spring, institutions, political economy

Abstract

The “oil curse thesis” links a country’s oil largesse inter alia to the durability of its authoritarian regime. And it contends that abundant oil revenues enable autocrats to stymie democratic transition by obviating taxation from citizens, buying off their political acquiescence, bolstering the repressive apparatus and thwarting the formation of civil society. This paper revisits the relevant literature by qualitatively testing its predictions on an in-depth case study of the Algerian regime in the face of the political crisis and riots of 2011. Going beyond the deterministic argument on “oil wealth-authoritarianism”, it carefully examines the strategic interaction between country-specific factors and oil wealth and studies how the confluence of these factors has shaped the survival of the authoritarian regime in Algeria since 2011.

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Author Biography

Lala Muradova Huseynova , UNESCO Chair of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

Project Researcher.

UNESCO Chair of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Tarragona

Spain

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Published

2016-03-21

How to Cite

Muradova Huseynova, L. (2016). Oil wealth and authoritarianism: Algeria in the Arab Spring. Revista Española De Ciencia Política, (40). Retrieved from https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/recp/article/view/39641

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Section

Articles