IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v90y2025ipbs0176268025000916.html

The OPEC/MENA/Arab nexus and the missing democratic transition

Author

Listed:
  • Paldam, Martin

Abstract

The democratic transition is a strong relation in the data, as analyzed elsewhere. This paper deals with the only large exception: The 26 countries in the OPEC/MENA/Arab nexus have no democratic transition. The explanation is complex as it requires (at least) two intertwined theories: The oil theory (for OPEC) and the institutional genes theory (for MENA). More than half of the OPEC and MENA groups overlap, and in addition all but two of the MENA countries are Arab, with similar language, religion, history, and culture, giving spatial effects. The paper is an attempt to untangle and test the theories, and demonstrate that both theories are needed, hence the overlapping countries that are both OPEC and MENA are especially far from democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Paldam, Martin, 2025. "The OPEC/MENA/Arab nexus and the missing democratic transition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 90(PB).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:90:y:2025:i:pb:s0176268025000916
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2025.102731
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268025000916
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2025.102731?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:90:y:2025:i:pb:s0176268025000916. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.