To this argument there were a number of crucial pieces of evidence. First of all, there is a clear inverse correlation between corruption and economic development not just in the Middle East, but globally. Secondly, Muslim countries are among the most corrupt countries in the world, and this maps well to the problems we know well from the region.
In
this sense, the abundance of natural resources has served to mask much
of the problem, as per capita wealth in the region comes out as much
higher than it would have been for a given level of corruption, and that
distorts the perception of societal problems in these countries.
For
another, that abundance of wealth can be used to buy off the
acquiescence of the population to an otherwise questionable regime, as
is the case with the benefits that these states lavish upon their
population, or alternatively, can be used to fund extensive repressive
police and intelligence apparatuses to keep the population in check, as
was the case in Saddam-era Iraq.
But there was also plenty of converse evidence, specifically states on
the periphery of the Islamic world which did not conform the region’s
reputation for corruption. Most notably, we had the examples of Turkey
and of Malaysia.
Read more on Al Arabiya
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