The Rentier State and the Historical Institutionalization of Parliament in Kuwait

Kuwait is a rentier state which obtains most of its income from oil revenues. However, and despite the arguments that suggest rentier states hinder democracy, the Kuwaiti system almost exclusively among the GCC states, could maintain a relatively good reputation concerning the development of its democracy. What helped Kuwait overcome its rentier state tendency for authoritarian rule, is the focus of this paper. While many scholars have emphasized the role of citizens' taxation as the most important driver of political participation and, at the same time, promoter the legitimacy of government, my paper focuses on the historical process from the perspective of historical institutionalism and emphasizes that the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the Kuwaiti public, based on a parliamentary model, and the organization of the Kuwaiti parliament itself, have been institutionalized in a historical process, and what we see from the progress of democracy and the outcomes of these two institutions in the political sphere of Kuwait today, is the result of this historical institutionalization. Now the fundamental question is how to evaluate the rentier state dynamics in relation to the historical institutionalization of parliament in Kuwait, and what is the role of a variable called a consolidated institution in this regard?