In class, we discussed the legitimacy of rentier and interventionist states. Because rentier states focus the bulk of their economy on only a few specific sources of income, it is important to see who is receiving the benefits of that income. In the Middle East, there isn't a large middle class. Most of the population is usually at one end of the spectrum or the other, rather than in between. The benefit of the rentier economy favors those at the high end of the spectrum, causing the gap between the two groups to grow wider.
Because there is such a dichotomy, I would say that this gap hurts the legitimacy of the state. One of the major examples would be the uprisings in 2011. Many youth were driven to protests because of the lack of basic rights, such as food or employment. In Bahrain, for example, Shiites quickly overtook the protests and added the sectarian angle, stating that Shiites were not as economically grounded as Sunnis and that they often lacked sufficient education and employment. In this case, the rentier economy benefits the government and its partners, rather than the population as a whole. Bahraini Shiites complained that they were being pushed out of employment in favor of foreign laborers, as it seemed that they had a larger share of the economy than actual Bahraini citizens.
This type of disconnect and disproportionate representation and access severely hurts a state's legitimacy. If the economy is seen as favoring one group or population over another, the state loses its legitimacy in the eyes of the people because it looks as if the rents are not being employed to serve the state as a whole. Because of this imbalance and the fact that the economy and the state are so closely tied together, it would seem as if rentier economies are less likely to experience legitimacy in the eyes of their population.
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