Some scholars suggest that the Middle East's oil wealth helps explain its failure to democratize. This article examines three aspects of this “oil impedes democracy” claim. First, is it true? Does oil have a consistendy antidemocratic effect on states, once other factors are accounted for? Second, can this claim be generalized? Is it true only in the Middle East or elsewhere as well? Is it true for other types of mineral wealth and other types of commodity wealth or only for oil? Finally, if oil does have antidemocratic properties, what is the causal mechanism?The author uses pooled time-series cross-national data from 113 states between 1971 and 1997 to show that oil exports are strongly associated with authoritarian rule; that this effect is not limited to the Middle East; and that other types of mineral exports have a similar antidemocratic effect, while other types of commodity exports do not.The author also tests three explanations for this pattern: a “rentier effect,” which suggests that resource-rich governments use low tax rates and patronage to dampen democratic pressures; a “repression effect,” which holds that resource wealth enables governments to strengthen their internal security forces and hence repress popular movements; and a “modernization effect,” which implies that growth that is based on the export of oil and minerals will fail to bring about die social and cultural changes that tend to produce democratic government. He finds at least limited support for all three effects.

Does Oil Hinder Democracy

Part I. Introduction: Developing a Regional Approach to Global Security: 1. Theories and histories about the structure of contemporary international security 2. Levels: distinguishing the regional from the global 3. Security complexes: a theory of regional security Part II. Asia: 4. South Asia: inching towards internal and external transformation 5. Northeast and southeast Asian security complexes during the Cold War 6. The 1990s and beyond: an emergent east Asian complex Conclusion Part III. The Middle East and Africa: Introduction 7. The Middle East: a perennial conflict formation 8. Sub-saharan Africa: security dynamics in a setting of weak and failed states Conclusions Part IV. The Americas: 9. North America: the sole superpower and its surroundings 10. South America: an under-conflictual anomaly? Conclusion: scenarios for the RSCs of the Americas Part V. The Europes: Introduction: 11. EU-Europe: the European Union and its 'near abroad' 12. The Balkans and Turkey 13. The post-Soviet space: a regional security complex around Russia Conclusion: scenarios for the European supercomplex Part VI. Conclusions: 14. Regions and powers: summing up and looking ahead 15. Reflections on conceptualising international security.

http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/3437/1/75.pdf

Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security

Questions about norm diffusion in world politics are not simply about whether and how ideas matter, but also which and whose ideas matter. Constructivist scholarship on norms tends to focus on “hard” cases of moral transformation in which “good” global norms prevail over the “bad” local beliefs and practices. But many local beliefs are themselves part of a legitimate normative order, which conditions the acceptance of foreign norms. Going beyond an existential notion of congruence, this article proposes a dynamic explanation of norm diffusion that describes how local agents reconstruct foreign norms to ensure the norms fit with the agents' cognitive priors and identities. Congruence building thus becomes key to acceptance. Localization, not wholesale acceptance or rejection, settles most cases of normative contestation. Comparing the impact of two transnational norms on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), this article shows that the variation in the norms' acceptance, indicated by the changes they produced in the goals and institutional apparatuses of the regional group, could be explained by the differential ability of local agents to reconstruct the norms to ensure a better fit with prior local norms, and the potential of the localized norm to enhance the appeal of some of their prior beliefs and institutions.I thank Peter Katzenstein, Jack Snyder, Chris Reus-Smit, Brian Job, Paul Evans, Iain Johnston, David Capie, Helen Nesadurai, Jeffrey Checkel, Kwa Chong Guan, Khong Yuen Foong, Anthony Milner, John Hobson, Etel Solingen, Michael Barnett, Richard Price, Martha Finnemore, and Frank Schimmelfennig for their comments on various earlier drafts of the article. This article is a revised version of a draft prepared for the American Political Science Association annual convention, San Francisco, 29 August–2 September 2001. Seminars on the article were offered at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, in April 2001; the Modern Asia Seminar Series at Harvard University's Asia Center, in May 2001; the Department of International Relations, Australian National University, in September 2001; and the Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, in April 2002. I thank these institutions for their lively seminars offering invaluable feedback. I gratefully acknowledge valuable research assistance provided by Tan Ban Seng, Deborah Lee, and Karyn Wang at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. I am also grateful to Harvard University Asia Centre and the Kennedy School's Asia Pacific Policy Program for fellowships to facilitate my research during 2000–2001.

http://www.rochelleterman.com/ir/sites/default/files/acharya%202004.pdf

How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism

Women have made less progress toward gender equality in the Middle East than in any other region. Many observers claim this is due to the region's Islamic traditions. I suggest that oil, not Islam, is at fault; and that oil production also explains why women lag behind in many other countries. Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. This argument has implications for the study of the Middle East, Islamic culture, and the resource curse.

Oil, Islam, and Women

Are predominantly Muslim societies distinctly disadvantaged in democratization? If so, why? The article presents a straightforward cross-national examination of the link between Islam and political regime. The evidence strongly suggests that Muslim countries are in fact democratic underachievers. The nature of the causal connection between Islam and political regime is investigated. Many conventional assumptions about Islam and politics do not withstand scrutiny. But one factor does help explain the dearth of democracy in the Muslim world: the treatment of women and girls. The rudiments of a provisional theory linking the treatment of females and regime type are offered and the implications of the findings for democracy, both in Muslim societies and elsewhere, are discussed.

Islam and Authoritarianism

Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society.

The international politics of regions : a comparative approach

It is argued that the study of regional international politics is important (1) for empirical reasons having to do with the real world saliency of the region as a factor in international politics; (2) for theoretical reasons having to do with the subordinate system as being relatively neglected in scholarship with the exception of the integrationist approach; and (3) for policy reasons having to do with the importance of accurately understanding the dynamics of the region as part of the objective of stabilizing the international system. The dominant approach to regional international politics of the integrationists (neo–functionalists and transactionalists) is then discussed and criticized in terms of the two approaches' normative concerns, the nature of the model utilized, and the theoretical issues that are raised. A major conclusion is that the integrative model used is inappropriate as a vestige of the level of analysis problem, and such theoretical issues as the nature of the dependent variable remain unspecified. It is then argued that the authors' formulation of an empirical systems approach begins to meet these criticisms.

The Analysis of Regional International Politics: The Integration Versus the Empirical Systems Approach

Louis 7. Cantori did his graduate work at Chicago, held Fulbright, SSRC and Ford awards for research in the United Arab Republic (1963-65) and Morocco (1967-69) and has taught at UCLA since 1966. His interests are in comparative political systems. His colleague at UCLA, Steven L. Spiegel, has also held his present post since 1966 and is presently on leave as a research associate with the Institute for War and Peace Studies, Colombia University. His graduate work was done at Harvard and his field is international relations.

The International Relations of Regions

This book is important for three reasons. The first is that its author is one of those remarkable intellectuals who emerged from the Iranian Revolution of 1979 onto the Islamic and world stage (others include the Ayotallah Khomeini, Ali Shariati, Mehdi Barzagan and Yadollah Sahabi). Soroush himself embodies both a deep background in the study of Islam and the study of chemistry and the philosophy of science at the University of London. The second reason is that its author is described by the translators and editors of the book as an \"iconic\" intellectual (roushanfekr), one of those Iranian intellectuals also reminiscent of other revolutions who are determined to pursue their ideas no matter the degree of genuine threat, of imprisonment and threats of assassination. In his case, Soroush is a heroic figure of the reformist movement headed by President Khatemi. What is noteworthy about contemporary Iran is that while the foregoing may be true, it is also the case that such persons still find it possible to identify themselves within Iran as reformers in the present internal dialectical encounter with the rightist clerics. The third reason this book is important is that while Soroush adopts a historicist point of view, including a deep and penetrating understanding of the philosophy of science, Western issues of philosophical and theological epistemology plus post-modernism, this does not lead to religious skepticism. In fact, the major significance of these writings is the manner in which Western ideas of the prominence of reason on the one hand and a judgment of the intellectual hopelessness of post-modernism on the other hand leads to the affirmation of belief.

Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, translated from the Persian, edited and with a Critical Introduction by Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 236 pages, index. US$24.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-19-515820-2

Louis J. Cantori

Papers

Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society.

The international politics of regions : a comparative approach

The Analysis of Regional International Politics: The Integration Versus the Empirical Systems Approach

The International Relations of Regions

Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, translated from the Persian, edited and with a Critical Introduction by Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 236 pages, index. US$24.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-19-515820-2