No Representation without Taxation? Rents, development and democracy
نویسنده
چکیده
It is widely thought that oil and democracy do not mix. Rentier states, it is argued, need not tax their citizens, thus breaking a crucial link between citizens and their governments, and dimming the prospects for democracy. In this paper I examine the link between rentierism and democracy using a cross-regional dataset. I pay particular attention to the possibility that there are both positive and negative effects of rentierism on democracy. I do not find consistent support for the notion that there is a net negative effect of rentierism on the prospects that a country will be democratic. I do find that democracy scores in the surrounding region are strongly correlated with a country’s own democracy score.
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