The State in Oil Rentier Economies: the Case of Bahrain

Abstract

The theoretical articulation of the concepts ‘rentier states’ and ‘rentier economies’ took place only recently. In 1970, H. Mahdavy introduced the concept of ‘rentier states’ to desig nate a situation under which the state’s dependence on external rents (that have very little to do with the productive effort of the society as a whole) is predominant. While Mahdavy concentrates largely on the state without establishing the important ties with the economy, Abdel-Fadil and Beblawi put greater emphasis on the economy, and define the concept of ‘rentier economy’ as an economy substantially supported by the rents that accrue from abroad.KeywordsGovernment ExpenditureGovernment EmploymentReserve FundTotal Government ExpenditureRentier StateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.