Resilient Étatism in Welfare Governance: Adaptation, Authority, and Modernisation in a Rentier State

This study examines welfare governance in rentier states as an adaptive system. The system reconciles centralised control with selective modernisation. The empirical base is 143 policy documents from 1971 to 2024. The framework draws on the Policy Arrangement Approach, with assemblage theory and Foucauldian governmentality as supplementary lenses. Three questions guide the analysis. How does the rentier state calibrate welfare provision to sustain legitimacy? How does it absorb external pressures without conceding authority? And how do the four policy arrangement dimensions interact across reform episodes? The findings show four patterns. Centralised resource control entrenches power asymmetries. Selective integration channels civil society towards national priorities. Modernisation narratives mediate the tension between reform and control and flexible policy arrangements absorb external pressure while preserving state authority. This study contributes to comparative welfare scholarship by introducing welfare-as-governance, an analytical category through which rentier welfare is distinguished by membership differentiation and institutional continuity rather than social citizenship.