LAUSR

Oil-exporting states in the Middle East and North Africa have launched reforms of long-standing energy subsidies thought to comprise an important source of legitimacy for autocratic regimes. The actions challenge enduring academic assumptions of the illegitimacy of retrenchment in polities underwritten by hydrocarbon rents. Here, I argue that a series of converging trends provided political cover for the reforms, including fiscal stress from low world oil prices, escalating regional instability, international environmental pressure, as well as untenable growth in domestic consumption of exportable commodities. While the reforms signal an important shift in state–society relations, the new policies appear to be designed to update — rather than jettison — rent-based autocratic governance.In recent years, Middle Eastern and North African oil-exporting states have begun reforming their energy subsidies. This Perspective argues that a number of trends — both local and global — have offered political cover for the changes, and that the reforms challenge existing governance theory.