Nigeria, despite its significant agricultural potential, has struggled to reach high levels of agricultural productivity. The country has gone from a net exporter of agricultural products from the few years after its independence to a net importer of food at present. The Oxford Business Group estimates that the country now spends as much as $23.3 billion on food import every year. To put this into perspective, the country’s entire allocation for its 2017 national budget was $23.97 billion, which in effect means Nigeria spends as much money on importing food as it spends on defense, health care, education, debt servicing, and capital expenditures combined. This study argues that the rentier nature of the Nigerian state has been a major contributing factor that has led to its poor agriculture performance. Thus, the study put forward that increasing agricultural productivity via a food self-sufficiency strategy would be of the best interest to the Nigerian government. Using a Double Log regression model, the study found that gross fixed capital formation and employment in agriculture has positive and statistically significant relationships with agricultural productivity in Nigeria. However, government recurrent expenditure in agriculture and credit to agriculture has a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with agricultural productivity in the country. In all, this study suggests that productivity in Nigeria’s agricultural sector can be improved with increased capital formation and labor in the sector under a framework of a food self-sufficiency strategy.

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For decades, the two biggest oil producers in the Middle East have been Saudi Arabia and Iran, two autocratic states that are also rivals in the region. With time, oil revenues have lowered and public discontent has risen. Through the use of a qualitative, comparative case study, this Bachelor’s Thesis aims to examine how the economic, social and political development in these countries has been affected by the oil revenues. From the theoretical viewpoints of Rentier State Theory and Assabiyya, the study concludes that oil revenues, as a considerable source of national income, has created undiversified economies in both Saudi Arabia and Iran. This has caused demands for economic, social and political change, leading to different responses from the respective states. Saudi Arabia has begun to diversify its economy to create several sources of income. The country has also initiated to loosen up its strict religious social codes in the public sphere. This is in contrast to Iran, where the government faces significant financial deficits and has started to exploit its population to compensate for the strained public economy. Additionally, no indication of political reforms towards a more democratic system of governance is seen in any of the two states.

This dissertation discusses United Arab Emirates (UAE) state-society relations in historical perspective; analyses qualitatively the Emirati political culture; examines how the latter affects governmental policies in the UAE; and evaluates both qualitatively and quantitatively the political orientations and values of the Emirati educated youth. Through a discussion of existing theoretical and conceptual approaches, and the observation of the UAE case study, it argues that an important and overlooked dimension among students of state-society relations in authoritarian rentier states is citizens’ political culture, which should nonetheless be examined within a more integrative framework of analysis. Accordingly, this study employs a refined version of the holistic ‘state-in-society’ approach (Kamrava, 2008), in combination with rentier state theory (RST) and the political culture perspective (Almond & Verba, 1963), to qualitatively discuss the general Emirati political culture (agency/input), and assess how the latter affects governmental performance/policies (output); and to evaluate, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the political culture of the educated Emirati youth as the main potential supporters or opponents (agency/input) of the ruling elite. Adding to the debate around the continued significance and scope of RST, the dissertation concludes that the rentier nature of a state does not necessarily determine its people´s lack of interest in politics, but can actually empower them to challenge authoritarianism through political socialization. The historical approach to UAE political movements and discussion about contemporary political standpoints demonstrate that governmental policies (redistributive, co-optative, repressive, or reformist) are mainly driven by domestic pressure and run parallel to historical development of domestic political activism. Hence, rentierism by itself does is not sufficient to explain state-society relations in the Gulf region. Finally, the analysis and measurement of cognitive, affective and evaluative political orientations of Emirati UAEU students reflects that there is adherence to ‘post-materialistic’ and ‘self-expression’ values among important sectors of the Emirati educated youth, which are associated with the emergence of a participative political culture (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005): an ‘aspiring participant’ political culture.

This PhD thesis examines the Gulf monarchies of Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as they strive to transform their political economies away from dependency on hydrocarbon revenues into more diverse sectors of economic activity. In particular, the research attempts to forecast the monarchies’ chances of achieving the transformation into principally private sector-led economies, while maintaining absolute rule and excluding those outside the circle of the ruling élites from political power or influence. The central research question guiding the study is ‘Human and National Security in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – Should Climate Change Matter?’ The effects of climate change provide a useful lens through which to examine each of the states’ policies and actions as they attempt to cope with the physical degradation of an already water and heat-stressed environment, coupled with declining oil and gas revenues from the West as a result of international climate change agreements. The thesis applies a ten question research framework to each of the entities to produce individual case studies for comparison. The research finds that climate change is acknowledged as an issue by each of the states, but is not at the top of their list of priorities. Rather, measures to improve human security are aimed at maximising the economic productiveness of each country to make up the deficit caused by decreasing hydrocarbon revenues and enable the monarchies to maintain the high level of free and subsidised state services they currently provide to their populations. They believe the effective maintenance of services directly contributes to political stability which assures the continuance of their current system of governance where political power lies solely with the rulers and their close advisors. Essentially, the priority for each of the ruling families is not climate change, but regime survival, preferably in its current form.

The main objective of this Master thesis was to test the claim that economic dependence on oil exports impedes enduring democratic stability in the case of Venezuela in the period of 1970-2010. This assumption was based on a broad resource curse theory which addresses negative economic, political and social consequences of precious resource export dependency. The hypothesis was that exogenous variables could intesify these malign consequences. In this study we focused on the role(s) performed by multinational oil corporations (MICs) in Venezuelan petroleum industry, on the impact of the nationalization of the oil sector and on the impact of the foundation of a state-owned corporation PDVSA, which became responsible for subsequent development of oil extraction. Fist, I proved that the nationalization led to profound restructuring of institutional and power relations that had negative impact on economic prosperity and stability of the democratic regime in a long-term perspective. Soon after its establishment the national oil corporation became an independent actor able to follow its own agenda and to promote its own economic and political interests and therefore polarized the already divided society. Second, I documented empirical evidence that corroborated most of the previous theoretical...

This study aims to analyze the development of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia by examiningthree reforms dated between the years of 2011 to 2022. The reforms revolve the progressmade within the subject and are therefore relevant to our paper. Furthermore, the reforms areanalyzed from the perspective of two theories: late rentierism and liberal feminism. Themethodology in the essay aims to seek motives behind decisions made by the state, thus beingappropriate to use in our case. In the analysis we connect the found motives with the chosentheories and draw conclusions regarding how the motives can be explained by each theory.Our findings show that the progress of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia can be connected tothe theory of late rentierism, where the reforms all indicate that the state of Saudi Arabia hastheir best economic interest in mind when implementing the reforms analyzed. A certainconnection with the theory of liberal feminism can be drawn as women’s rights are legalizedto a larger extent, as well as their rights in family matters that appear to be of larger interest tothe state today.