GCC Countries as "Rentier States" Revisited, a Book Review by by Robert Springbord of The Gulf Region: Economic Development and Diversification (4 vols.), ed. by Giaccomo Luciani, Steffen Hertog, Eckart Woertz, and Richard Youngs
Abstract
Giacomo Luciani, the senior editor of this four volume set, along with Hazem Beblawi
laid the conceptual foundations for Arab rentier states a quarter of a century ago.1 He and
his team of some 40 researchers have now revisited this concept as part of a broader effort to
describe and analyze the political economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.
The very title of the flagship volume edited by Luciani, Resources Blessed: Diversification
and the Gulf Development Model, suggests revision to the prevailing, Luciani-influenced orthodoxy
that the resource curse and its attendant rentierism are inherently inconsistent with
economic diversification and development. Revisionism implied by the title is indeed borne
out as the editor and authors present a largely positive account of the economic accomplishments
and future of the GCC states, distancing themselves, sometimes explicitly, not only
from negative prognostications for rentier states, but even from the present applicability of
the concept itself to the “mothers” of all rentier states, those that comprise the GCC.
Description
Reviewed: The Gulf Region: Economic Development and Diversification (4 vols.), ed. by Giaccomo Luciani, Steffen Hertog, Eckart Woertz, and Richard Youngs. Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2012.
Resources Blessed: Diversification and the Gulf Development Model (Vol. 1), ed. by Giacomo Luciani.
National Employment, Migration and Education in the GCC (Vol. 2), ed. by Steffen Hertog.
GCC Financial Markets: The World’s New Money Centers (Vol. 3), ed. by Eckert Woertz.
The GCC in the Global Economy (Vol. 4), ed. by Richard Youngs.
The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/67.2.3
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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