Brian Ulrich at American Footprints comments on Riad al-Khouri’s call for a revision of the rentier state theory fashioned after Kuwait’s qualified progress toward democracy. Al- Khouri states that “while unruly and sometimes embarrassing, Kuwait’s experience offers an example of what could be a future model for politics in a rentier state.”
Ulrich notes that “it seems likely that the historic lack of political liberalization isn’t tied to the fact that Gulf governments don’t extract tax revenue from their citizens, but that said citizens haven’t historically made agitation for political reform a priority.”
