group(s) may also constitute refugee rentier states, if they rely financially on external income linked to their treatment of these group(s), as in the cases of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis. Dependent upon it as a source of income, rentier states may generate rents externally by manipulating the global political and economic environment. Such manipulation may include monopolies, trading restrictions, and the solicitation of subsidies or aid in exchange for political influence or conversely the solicitation of loans in exchange for the reserve currency, e.g., the United States. Definition Hazem Al Beblawi suggested four characteristics of a rentier state: In a rentier economy rent situations predominate. The economy relies on a substantial external rent – and therefore does not require a strong domestic productive sector. Only a small proportion of the working population is actually involved in the generation of the rent, whereas the majority is only involved in the distribution or utilization of it. Perhaps most importantly, the state's government is the principal recipient of the external rent. Examples The emergence of the new oil states and their increasing importance in world trade in the 1970s brought a renewed interest in thinking on rentier economies in the aforementioned disciplines of political science and international relations. Examples of rentier states include oil-producing countries in the MENA region including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Libya and Algeria as well as a few states in Latin America, all of whom are members of OPEC. African states such as Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Ghana, Uganda and South Sudan are also important oil producers with rentier economies, earning income from trading natural resources. Rentier state theory has been one of several theories advanced to explain the predominance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and the apparent lack of success of democracy in the region. While many states export resources or license their development by foreign parties, rentier states are characterized by the relative absence of revenue from domestic taxation, as their naturally occurring wealth precludes the need to extract income from their citizenry. According to Douglas Yates, the economic behavior of a rentier state "embodies a break in the work-reward causation ... [r]ewards of income and wealth for the rentier do not come as the result of work but rather are the result of chance or situation." Hazem Beblawi has argued that this