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DOUGLAS A. YATES, The Rentier State in Africa: oil rent dependency and neocolonialism in the Republic of Gabon. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1996, 249 pp., L12.99, ISBN 0 86543 521 9 paperback.
Gabon belongs to the handful of African countries that does not attract significant scholarship among specialists of modern Africa. Since Brian Weinstein's seminal work (Nation-building on the Ogooue, 1966) few political scientists have been interested in studying this small, underpopulated country. As a consequence, Gabon suffers from a widespread reputation of being a rich, tiny, and uncomplicated country, ruled by an undeterred dictator. In this regard, Douglas Yates's short book is a welcome exception.
According to Yates, the situation in Gabon can be summarised by underdevelopment, dictatorship, and lack of social justice. Fuelled by moral outrage at injustices, Yates argues that the plagues of Gabon can be explained by a double dependence: the country's exaggerated reliance on oil revenues, and the fact that it...