Resources and the Political Economy of State Fragility in Conflict States
This paper studies state failure and governance in two conflict-states in the Middle East: Iraq and Somalia. Iraq is currently undergoing a social experiment under which a new form of government is being constructed after the passage of autocratic rule. The government envisaged is a consociational d...
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| Format: | conferenceObject |
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2008
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10725/6102 http://libraries.lau.edu.lb/research/laur/terms-of-use/articles.php https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghassan_Dibeh/publication/23547958_Resources_and_the_Political_Economy_of_State_Fragility_in_Conflict_States_Iraq_and_Somalia/links/0046352973c171b454000000.pdf |
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| Summary: | This paper studies state failure and governance in two conflict-states in the Middle East: Iraq and Somalia. Iraq is currently undergoing a social experiment under which a new form of government is being constructed after the passage of autocratic rule. The government envisaged is a consociational democratic state designed a priori as a political mechanism for the redistribution of resources, mainly oil. Somalia represents a stateless society or anarchy. The paper argues that in resource-rich countries such as Iraq, the consociational project leads to an Olson-type rent-seeking confessional behaviour that hampers economic growth and development. The rent-seeking behaviour in Iraq is fuelling the insurgency that perceives the consociational system as a grabbing. |
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