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Hydrocarbon Citizens
Hydrocarbon Citizens
How Oil Transformed People and Politics in
the Middle East
NIMAH MAZAHERI
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mazaheri, Nimah, author.
Title: Hydrocarbon citizens : how oil transformed people and politics in
the Middle East / Nimah Mazaheri.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022021905 (print) | LCCN 2022021906 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197636725 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197636749 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Petroleum industry and trade—Social aspects—Middle
East—History. | Citizenship—Middle East. | Public
administration—Middle East—Public opinion.
Classification: LCC HD9576.M52 M39 2023 (print) |
LCC HD9576.M52 (ebook) | DDC 338.2/72820956—dc23/eng/20220803
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022021905
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022021906
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197636725.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Oil Merchants
By N. M. Ráshed (translated from the Urdu by M. A. R. Habib)
For one black mole the towns of Buqara and Samarqand!

But where now are Buqara and Samarqand?
Buqara and Samarqand are lost in dreams
Hidden in the veils of an azure silence
Their doors closed to travellers
Like the eyelids of a beautiful sleeping woman
Preserved from the lash of Russian ‘Pantheism’
Two beauties!
Forget Buqara and Samarqand
And think now of your shining cities
Of the roofs, doors and terraces of
Tehran and Masshad
Look to the
Pleasant fountains of your age of sense and action
And these beautiful metaphors of your new hopes
Make high the low walls
Of these splendid cities
Post your sentries at every tower and rampart
And in your homes, silence all sound
Save the wind
For outside, beneath the city walls
Robbers have long been pitching their tents
Dressed as oil merchants
Tomorrow or tonight at dark
They’ll come as guests
To your houses
To drink from the goblets
Of the banquet night
They’ll dance, sing
And laugh impulsively, noisily
To warm the blood of the gathering!
But when dawn breaks

Then you will dig
Graves for your dead with your eyelashes
Then you’ll shed tears
On the ashes of merriment’s stage
We also have shed tears
—Though the black mole is worthless
That deep oozing ulcer which arose on earth’s cheek
From Europeans’ murdering lust—
We also have shed tears
Cities, like liquid shadows, dissolving in waste
Falling roofs and doors
Minarets and domes
But time is an arch
And our enemy passes through its curved flanks
Rolling down its lower horizon
Imprisoning and whipping
Our naked, lean bodies
Our tyrant begins to
Sweat in his own fire
Place your hand in mine!

Place your hand in mine!
For I have seen
Rays on the peaks of Alwand and Himaliya
Through them at last will break
A Sun
Longing for this, Buqara and Samarqand
Have long been beggars.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
2. Why Do Hydrocarbon Citizens Think Differently about
Their Government? 13
3. Hydrocarbon Citizens and Government Performance in the
Middle East 46
4. A Passion in the Desert: How Saudi Arabians View
Government Performance 84
5. A Gush of Oil and a Trickle: Loyalty in the UAE and
Discontent in Jordan 110
6. Seeds of Doubt: Democratic Attitudes and the Politics of
Hydrocarbon Citizens 145
7. Conclusion 184
Appendix: Survey Details and Methodology 191

Notes 199
Bibliography 219
Index 237
Acknowledgments
This book benefited immensely from the advice of many scholars, friends,
and students. I would like to thank John Buchanan, William d’Ambruoso,
Karam Dana, Dinissa Duvanova, Matthew Fails, Chris Heurlin, Sunila Kale,
Noora Lori, Mary Anne Madeira, Victor McFarland, Steve Monroe, Malik
Mufti, Norrin Ripsman, Brian Schaffner, Ibrahim Warde, and Bassam Yousif.
A special thanks goes to Mohannad Al-Suwaidan. He provided the Arabic
translations of the surveys and was a source of great insight on issues re-
garding oil in the Middle East. Jack Adgate, Somya Banwari, and Harshad
Vaswani served as excellent research assistants. Joanne Burman of the British
Petroleum Archive graciously facilitated access to a wealth of materials.
I would like to thank all of my students in the course “Politics of Oil and
Energy” at Tufts University. For over a decade, they have offered feedback on
my ideas and helped to create a space where we explore the ways that oil and
natural resources affect nations and societies around the world.
A great deal of thanks goes to the anonymous scholars who reviewed my
manuscript. Their criticisms and suggestions were instrumental in helping
me to shape the book into its current form. I remain grateful that they
saw some promise in the project and helped to push it forward at Oxford
University Press. It has given me the special opportunity and privilege of
working with Angela Chnapko, Alexcee Bechthold, and an amazing team.
I am very appreciative of the astute editorial assistance provided by Dorothy
Bauhoff and Judith Robey.
This book is dedicated to my mother, who has been a constant source of
love, support, and encouragement throughout my life.
1
Introduction
Across the Middle East, more than 360 million people live in countries where
oil’s influence on the economy, politics, and society spans at least three gener-
ations. In places such as Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia,
the discovery of oil was so transformative that it radically altered these coun-
tries’ historical trajectories. Before oil was discovered in the early part of the
twentieth century, these countries were poor and their governments were
underfunded. A large share of the population eked out a meager existence.
The discovery of oil catapulted these countries and their economies into the
modern era.
The “oil boom” of the 1970s brought even more changes as oil prices
increased tenfold over the decade. This led to a huge windfall for oil-
producing nations, which fueled development throughout the Middle East,
particularly in the Gulf region. Oil funded the expansion of public sectors,
boosted state-level economic activity, and led to a relationship between
governments and their citizenry that was oriented around distribution.
Citizens began receiving various oil-funded benefits, such as government
jobs, free public services, and plentiful subsidies. Because of oil, millions of
illiterate and vulnerable people living in harsh environments were given ac-
cess to education, hospitals, and reliable infrastructure.
But not all of the changes were positive. In many places, oil fed corrup-
tion and elite-driven politics. Autocratic leaders who had access to oil wealth
often used the windfall of revenues to expand their tools of repression. This
allowed them to clamp down on civil unrest and on calls for more freedoms
among the populace. And not all oil producers in the Middle East experi-
enced sustained economic gains. During the “oil bust” of the 1980s, many
realized that tying the fate of the economy to a volatile commodity creates
its own set of problems. On a few occasions, being an oil producer led to
violence as invading armies or rebel groups tried to plunder the oil. Oil pro-
vided both the motivation for and financing behind the prolongation of these
conflicts.
Hydrocarbon Citizens. Nimah Mazaheri, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197636725.003.0001
2 Hydrocarbon Citizens
What makes oil so valuable and transformative on some levels yet so

potentially harmful on others? The contradictory effects of oil on Middle
Eastern states have long been a subject of interest to scholars in a range of
fields. Previous scholarship has addressed oil’s effects by focusing on the
region’s leaders, elites, and national economies, largely ignoring questions
of how oil has impacted the ordinary people who have long lived in oil’s
midst. This book provides a novel way of understanding oil’s impacts on
these countries: focusing on ordinary citizens, whom an oil-based economy
has transformed. I contend that oil has fostered a unique type of citizen
throughout the Middle East: the “hydrocarbon citizen.”
Hydrocarbon citizens have attitudes, beliefs, and values that are funda-
mentally different from those of citizens in countries with little or no oil.
As this book demonstrates, citizens in countries with abundant oil wealth
are significantly more likely to hold positive views about their governments
compared to the citizens of non-oil countries. Specifically, more oil wealth is
associated with citizens perceiving their governments as sound managers of
the economy and generous providers of key social services. More oil wealth
is also associated with perceiving governments as effective at addressing en-
demic problems such as corruption and inequality. These relationships hold
up irrespective of how well the government has actually performed in these
areas and whether the country is rich or poor, democratic or autocratic, po-
litically stable or unstable.
Why are the attitudes of hydrocarbon citizens about their governments
different from the attitudes of citizens in places without oil? Three factors
are important. The first is the unpredictable nature of an economy based on
oil exports. Since citizens must rely on the government to manage oil pro-
duction and steer the benefits to society, their most logical course is to put
faith in the government to serve as a powerful, constructive force in man-
aging an oil-based economy. The second factor is the difficulty of benefiting
directly from oil production as an individual citizen. The combined history,
geography, and technology of oil production in the Middle East has compli-
cated individuals’ ability to make money from oil, so the best option is to seek
out indirect benefits distributed through the government. The third factor is
past transgressions by Western oil companies during the initial decades of
oil production. The exploitation of the Middle East’s oil by Westerners led
to popular oil nationalization movements that called on governments of oil-
producing nations to play a more active, paternalistic role in the economy
and society.
Introduction 3
What is at stake in achieving a better understanding of the attitudes of

hydrocarbon citizens in the Middle East? In a basic sense, having a handle
on public attitudes in the region’s oil producers—and gaining insight into
how citizens of these countries evaluate government policies, priorities, and
decisions—can provide clarity about the nature of state-society relations in
places that scholars continue to puzzle over. For almost half a century, schol-
arship on oil-producing countries has assumed that oil wealth allows leaders
to forgo taxation and buy off the citizenry through generous distribution,
resulting in a more “satisfied” populace than in non-oil producers. But we
have little evidence of this satisfaction, even though a few studies on indi-
vidual oil producers have appeared in recent years. This book provides abun-
dant evidence pointing to such a dynamic. Using a wealth of cross-national
survey data, in addition to original surveys, the book sets out to describe and
measure the extent of citizen satisfaction across a variety of policy areas.
Investigating public attitudes also serves the larger goal of improving upon
existing explanations of political outcomes in these countries. In no other
region of the world has the move toward democracy been slower than in the
Middle East, and many scholars place the blame on oil’s effects on leaders
and national economies. This book does not deny these forces, but it offers
another story that has not been told thus far. It discusses how one engine
of political change (or the lack thereof) is located in the motivations and
aspirations of the citizens of oil-producing nations. Using cross-national
survey data, the book shows that Middle Eastern states with abundant oil
wealth are more likely to have citizens who perceive democracy in a negative
light. Specifically, more oil is associated with citizens who associate democ-
racy with weak economic performance, indecision, and a lack of order and
stability. More oil is associated with citizens who believe that democracies
are no better than other political systems. More oil is associated with citizens
who believe that democracy is inappropriate for their country.
There is a vital need to examine the issue of democracy in the Middle
East today. The “Arab Spring” upheavals of the 2010s led to urgent calls
among scholars for studies that gauge public support for democracy in the
region. These were the largest pro-democracy movements the Middle East
had ever witnessed. Protestors were criticizing leaders for corruption, in-
equality, and elite-driven politics. Many called for the overthrow of au-
tocratic governments. Over this period, the region’s oil producers were
rocked by protests and some of them saw sustained governmental crises that
led to breakdowns. But oil also ended up helping some of these embattled
autocracies as it financed increased subsidies and helped to make credible

the threat of repression. And as the book’s results amply demonstrate, an-
other democracy-inhibiting factor was operating at the time in these coun-
tries: weaker public support for democracy.
Although the book provides solid evidence of attitudinal patterns
throughout oil- producing countries, that does not mean that entire
populations hold strongly positive views about the government and are
uniformly skeptical about democracy. It would be foolish to claim that was
the case. Unpacking national attitudes to focus on key subgroups of the cit-
izenry is essential if we are to avoid overgeneralization and paint a more ac-
curate picture of hydrocarbon citizens. Doing so also allows for tests of the
behavioral implications of some of the most well-known theories in the so-
cial sciences. For instance, the rentier state argument implies that citizens in
oil-producing nations should become more satisfied with the government
as it generously distributes oil’s benefits. But does this actually happen? The
modernization argument is a controversial theory which implies that citi-
zens should become more critical of an autocratic government as they be-
come wealthier, more educated, and exhibit other facets of “modernity.” This
theory, too, has never been tested on the Middle East’s oil producers using
survey data. There are also many theories about the role of economic geog-
raphy, one of which is that large capital investments in a particular locale will
positively affect development. Although the history of oil in the Middle East
tells a very different story, it is unknown if there are geographic differences in
citizens’ attitudes that can be traced to the effects of oil.
The book relies on a wealth of survey data—including original surveys
of citizens from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—to ex-
plore these theories and reveal attitudinal differences between subgroups of
a hydrocarbon citizenry. Insightful findings emerge at the levels of age, occu-
pation, education, gender, and location of residence. For example, different
types of government employees are linked to polarized attitudes about gov-
ernment performance. Education is linked to more negative attitudes about
government performance among Saudi Arabians, but not Emiratis. Residing
in the oil-producing region is also associated with more negative attitudes
among Saudi Arabians, but not Emiratis. A number of other findings emerge
that shine a light on the variation among the populations of two countries
often assumed to be so similar to each other. The broader lesson is that
while there are consistent patterns and tendencies among hydrocarbon cit-
izens in the region—particularly when compared to the citizens of non-oil
Introduction 5
states—they are far from an unvariegated mass that marches lock-step in

support of their leaders.
In spite of all we know about the impacts of oil in the Middle East, we
know surprisingly little about how ordinary people living in the region’s oil
producers think about the pressing issues facing their nation, community,
and family. This book provides a new way of thinking about the citizenry of
these countries and thereby informs a better understanding of the region’s
history, its current challenges, and possible paths forward. The discovery of
oil has generated a number of positive outcomes for many of these nations,
but it has generated a number of negative ones as well. To make sense of what
happened in these places after oil was discovered, we need to extend our gaze
beyond leaders, elites, and national economies. We need to understand how
ordinary citizens have been impacted by living in a place transformed by oil.
The Theory
The book’s main contention is that oil’s impact in the Middle East can be
observed in the attitudes, beliefs, and values of average citizens as they re-
late to politics and the government. It argues that an important—but until
now overlooked—consequence of oil’s dominance in the Middle East is that
it gave rise to “hydrocarbon citizens,” who share a set of views and attitudes
that distinguish them from citizens of non-oil states. Specifically, oil wealth
has fostered a hydrocarbon citizenry that is more likely to hold positive views
about the government’s performance across economic and social realms.
These citizens are more likely to perceive the government as an effective man-
ager of the national economy, as a generous provider of goods and services,
and as a responsive protector of societal well-being. These attitudes in turn
shape their ideas about the need for political reform. The more oil wealth a
country has, the more likely its citizens are skeptical about democracy and
harbor greater fears about the potentially destabilizing effects of democracy
movements.
Three causal factors are important in explaining how oil production has
affected citizens’ attitudes about their governments. First, it must be rec-
ognized that an economy based on oil production is unpredictable. Oil is a
volatile commodity that strongly impacts the economies of countries pro-
ducing it in large quantities. On the one hand, oil can generate many positive
outcomes. Few would argue that oil is not the main reason why the Middle
East’s Gulf states have the level of per capita income, quality of infrastructure,
and abundance of public services that they do today. Yet oil can also lead
to volatile economies, autocracy, civil conflict, corruption, and societal frag-
mentation. The mixed blessings of an oil-dependent economy play an im-
portant part in shaping the average citizen’s attitudes about government and
policies. Because oil holds the potential for both promise and peril, the av-
erage citizen by necessity looks to a powerful national government to guide
the sector, distribute benefits to the people, and mitigate the harmful side
effects of economic instability. As oil is a key factor in the country’s develop-
ment over time, the government solidifies its role as a vital economic man-
ager and provider of oil-funded benefits. This helps to foster a popular image
of the government as effective, helpful, and responsive to the public’s needs.
Second, because of the historical, geographical, and technological aspects
of oil production, the vast majority of citizens in oil-producing nations do
not benefit directly from oil revenues. Instead, they benefit indirectly via
the tools and functions of government. In the industry’s early days, geog-
raphy affected who would benefit from oil because it was discovered in
far-flung, remote locations where a tiny local labor pool existed. This spa-
tial mismatch meant that the only people who could directly benefit in
terms of employment or economic opportunities needed to migrate to the
oil-producing region. But new oil jobs were not exactly abundant. Oil is
one of the most capital-intensive sectors in the world and employs a small
number of workers compared to its gigantic contribution to national econ-
omies. Furthermore, Western oil companies adopted discriminatory hiring
practices that favored migrant workers over locals at almost every skill level.
Due to these factors, the citizens of oil producers in the Middle East needed
to look to their governments and granted them wide-ranging responsibilities
to manage the industry and channel its benefits to society. Over time, this has
led to dependency on the government that in turn has helped to justify the
government’s active involvement in many areas of economic and social life.
Finally, exploitation by Western oil companies during the oil industry’s
initial years led to a wave of nationalization movements during the 1950s–
1970s. These movements profoundly impacted citizens’ attitudes toward
their governments, and this impact lasts to the present day. The movements
called for leaders to stand up to foreign concerns and increase the country’s
share of oil profits—or expropriate the oil sector altogether. Exploitation
by Western companies roused feelings of anger, resentment, and national-
istic pride in oil-producing countries. Politicians, technocrats, clerics, and
Introduction 7
the local media used emotional language to rally people around the issue of
oil nationalization, underlining the urgent need for governments to right
the wrongs of the past and exercise greater control over their country’s oil.
Ideologically, oil nationalization movements dovetailed with the worldwide
decolonization and sovereign rights movements that were occurring at the
time. By the end of the oil nationalization era, most citizens of the Middle
East’s oil producers saw broad justification for granting their governments
paternalistic responsibilities over the economy, distribution of oil-funded
benefits, and protection from Western exploitation. These beliefs have helped
governments to foster an image of themselves as effective, essential, and re-
sponsive to the will of the people.
These three factors—the unpredictability of an oil-based economy, the in-
direct benefits of oil for the citizens of oil-producing nations, and sentiments
arising from the oil nationalization era—outline predictions about the
patterns of public attitudes in the Middle East. The more oil a country has,
the more likely that citizens will believe their government is a generous and
helpful provider of essential goods and services. The more oil a country has,
the more likely that citizens will believe their government is effective at man-
aging the national economy and providing opportunities. More oil wealth
should also be associated with citizens who believe their government is re-
sponsive and proactive in protecting society. These attitudes should hold
irrespective of the country’s overall wealth, democratic versus autocratic
tendencies, or level of political stability. To be sure, this does not mean that
all citizens of oil-producing nations will adopt these attitudes or that they
are accurate reflections of their governments and its performance. Yet if the
book’s theory is correct, there should be a discernible pattern of more posi-
tive attitudes about the government emanating from the citizens of Middle
Eastern countries with abundant oil wealth compared to citizens of countries
with little or no oil.
Understanding how oil wealth has shaped public attitudes can provide
insights into another dynamic that deeply concerns observers of the Middle
East: the absence of democracy. Indeed, all but one of the oil-producing
states of the region have full autocratic or hybrid regimes (the exception is
Tunisia after 2011). Scholars have offered a number of theories about why
an oil-based economy would dampen the prospects of democracy in a
country: (1) oil wealth helps leaders buy off democratic demands via gen-
erous distribution; (2) oil wealth leads to the expansion of a security appa-
ratus that facilitates repression of democratic movements; and (3) oil wealth
leads to higher incomes without the need to educate citizens or promote so-
cial capital. This book identifies an additional causal process. If oil wealth is
linked to more positive attitudes about the government (i.e., it is perceived
as effective, generous, helpful, responsive, and proactive), then this should
reduce criticism of the government as a whole. Furthermore, the unpredict-
ability associated with oil’s economic effects should lead citizens to prefer
a stable authoritarian regime that exchanges autocracy for economic secu-
rity. Likewise, citizens who rely on oil-funded benefits from the government
may rationally fear that a democratic order would increase competition over
public funds. This is expected to render the citizens of oil producers more
skeptical about the merits of democratization.
What Lies Ahead
The book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the
book’s argument. It starts by situating the argument in the broader litera-
ture on oil and natural resources. The idea of the “rentier state” is explained,
which is a concept that scholars often rely on to account for oil’s political, ec-
onomic, and social effects. Conceived in the 1970s but rooted in fourteenth-
century philosophical writings, the rentier state argument posits that the
discovery of oil results in a stable, autocratic, distribution-focused govern-
ment. This happens because abundant oil wealth provides leaders a steady
stream of money that causes them to de-emphasize tax collection and focus
instead on using the oil money to widely distribute benefits to the public.
As generous revenue distribution satisfies society’s fundamental needs and
wants, the people become politically submissive and leaders are able to rule
as autocrats.
The “rentier mentality” argument is then discussed. This controversial
theory holds that the presence of a rentier state affects people in ways that
are cognitive and behavioral. When people reside in a rentier state over time,
they become dependent on governmental distributions and develop a “get
rich quick” mentality or succumb to laziness. It is a theory that is poorly
suited for empirical testing and is sometimes articulated in offensive and ori-
entalist ways. That said, it is one of the earliest theories about the individual-
level effects of oil, and it leads us to think harder—using better logic, data,
and methodologies—about how oil’s legacy can have behavioral effects on
people. The rentier mentality argument tries to connect the long-ignored
Introduction 9
micro-level effects of an oil-based economy to its well-studied macro-level

effects, which this book similarly seeks to do.
Next, the book outlines an argument about how oil in the Middle East
has affected citizens’ attitudes about their government and politics. It is
posited that three causal factors shape the patterns of public attitudes prev-
alent among the Middle East’s oil producers today. Each of these factors is
examined in detail, drawing upon a wide range of source materials. First,
the chapter discusses how oil’s unpredictable nature affects public attitudes
about the roles and responsibilities of the government. Second, it explores
how public attitudes are shaped by the history, geography, and technology
of oil production in the region. Finally, the chapter discusses how the legacy
of Western exploitation of Middle Eastern oil influences citizens’ attitudes
about the kind of political system they need in order to promote their own
interests. These factors have led citizens to endow their government with
more positive qualities and to evaluate its performance in a more positive
manner compared to citizens in non-oil states.
The chapter concludes by discussing how these factors lead to predictions
about the effects of oil wealth on citizens’ attitudes about government per-
formance. Holding all else equal, the more oil wealth a country has, the more
likely its citizens will express the beliefs that their government is a generous
and helpful provider of essential goods and services, an effective manager
of the national economy, and a creator of economic opportunities. More oil
wealth should also be associated with a greater likelihood of believing that the
government is responsive and proactive in rooting out societal harms. But
obviously not all citizens of oil-producing nations will adhere to these beliefs.
Unpacking the variation in attitudes across subgroups of the citizenry is an
important way of achieving a nuanced understanding of oil-producing na-
tions. It also facilitates tests of the behavioral implications of three big ideas
in the social sciences: the rentier state argument, modernization theory, and
the role of economic geography. This is done by examining how various indi-
vidual-and household-level factors (a person’s education, occupation, level
of economic security, and more) are associated with attitudes about the gov-
ernment in a single hydrocarbon nation.
Chapter 3 opens the empirical part of the analysis. The book’s argument is
first tested using survey data from the Arab Barometer, which is the largest
source of public opinion data in the Middle East. Basic statistics, regression
analyses, and data visualization techniques reveal that oil wealth is positively
associated with citizens believing that the government (1) does a good job
of managing the economy, (2) is effective at job creation, (3) is effective at

improving healthcare, (4) is concerned with the needs of ordinary citizens,
(5) is committed to reducing inequality, and (6) is actively fighting corrup-
tion. The chapter proceeds to investigate how different subgroups of a hydro-
carbon citizenry perceive the government and its performance. The analysis
finds that citizens who are younger and economically insecure tend to hold
more negative attitudes about an oil-rich government’s performance com-
pared to older and economically secure citizens. Also, women tend to hold
more positive attitudes about the government’s performance than men.
Chapter 4 explores how the citizens of Saudi Arabia think about their gov-
ernment and its performance across economic, social, and oil-related policy
areas. The results of an original survey conducted among more than 550
Saudi Arabian citizens in 2018 are presented. The survey found that Saudi
Arabians tend to hold very positive attitudes about the government’s perfor-
mance across a range of policy areas. Regression analysis is then used to ex-
amine the determinants of individual attitudes about the government. The
analysis finds that Saudi Arabians with more education and lower incomes,
along with those residing in the oil-rich Eastern Province, tend to hold more
negative attitudes about the government’s performance than those for whom
these conditions do not hold. The analysis then turns to the role of occupa-
tion. It discovers that not all government employees exhibit similar levels of
support for the state. Whereas government ministry employees tend to be
positively disposed toward the government, non-ministry employees tend
to be negatively disposed. Other occupational patterns are discussed, such
as differences between Saudi Arabian women who work and Saudi Arabian
men who work, and differences between small business owners and large
business owners.
Chapter 5 discusses another major oil producer, the UAE, as well as an
oil-poor state, Jordan. The chapter begins by presenting the results from an
original survey conducted among 550 Emirati citizens in 2018. While some
similarities emerge between Emiratis and Saudi Arabians, there are crucial
differences as well. The survey finds that Emiratis tend to hold exception-
ally positive views of government performance across economic, social, and
oil-related policy areas. Regression analysis uncovers striking generational
differences among Emiratis that are not in evidence among Saudi Arabians.
Also, the role that education plays for Emiratis sharply contrasts with
the same factor among Saudi Arabians. Yet occupational patterns among
Emiratis are similar to what was observed among Saudi Arabians, which
Introduction 11
helps to confirm that different types of government jobs are linked to polar-
ized attitudes about the government of an oil producer.
Survey results from Jordan are then presented with a focus on under-
standing patterns in attitudes among government employees. Jordan is
often described as a “non-oil rentier state” and shares a number of similar-
ities with the Middle East’s oil producers, including autocratic features and
a large public sector. Yet Jordan’s government employees take on attitudes
that are very different from what was observed among Saudi Arabian and
Emirati government employees. The attitudes of Jordanian government
employees are either no different or more negative about government per-
formance compared to Jordanians in other occupations. These findings help
to reinforce the notion that public-sector work is fundamentally different
in oil-producing countries in how it shapes citizens’ perceptions about the
state. Oil wealth can fund the provision of high-quality government jobs that
render citizens dependent on a generous distributive system, which results in
greater support for the government.
Chapter 6 examines how the citizens of the Middle East’s oil producers—
who reside in some of the longest lasting autocratic states in the world—
understand and evaluate democracy and political reform. Using statistical
methods and relying on survey data from the Arab Barometer and the World
Values Survey, the chapter reveals that oil wealth is positively associated with
citizens believing that (1) economic performance is weak in a democratic
system, (2) democratic systems are indecisive and full of problems, (3) dem-
ocratic systems are not effective at maintaining order and stability, (4) a dem-
ocratic system is not better than other political systems, and (5) democracy
is inappropriate for their country. These findings hold irrespective of how
rich the country is, how democratic it is, how democratic people perceive it
to be, and how stable it was during the Arab Spring. That said, not all citizens
of oil producers hold the same beliefs about democracy. Age, education, and
economic status are all positively associated with democratic attitudes in the
oil producers. Women are more likely than men to fear the potentially desta-
bilizing effects of democracy. In order to shed light on the effects of the Arab
Spring, democratic attitudes in two countries that saw governmental crises—
Algeria and Jordan—are compared. While the findings are only sugges-
tive, they reveal more negative attitudes about democracy in oil-producing
Algeria compared to non-oil-producing Jordan.
Chapter 7 concludes the book. The chapter highlights the main findings
and discusses their implications for understanding the effects of oil wealth
on the Middle East’s past, present, and future. It returns to the central ar-
gument that oil’s transformative impact on a nation can be observed in the
ways that citizens think about their government and politics. The more oil a
country has, the more likely are its citizens to hold positive views of govern-
ment performance across many policy areas and to express skepticism about
the merits of democracy. These findings are crucial to keep in mind as these
countries chart their own political futures in a region increasingly swept up
by chaos and disorder. Certain forces push the citizens of oil-producing na-
tions to endorse political change and support democracy, but other, more
powerful forces pull them toward embracing an autocratic system.
2
Why Do Hydrocarbon Citizens Think
Differently about Their Government?
This book advances the argument that the transformative impact of oil in the
Middle East is reflected in citizens’ attitudes, values, and beliefs in relation
to their government and national politics. It shows that an important—but
until now unexamined—consequence of oil wealth for many Middle Eastern
states is the birth of “hydrocarbon citizens.” This term is used to denote the
citizens of countries with abundant oil wealth, whose political attitudes con-
trast with those of citizens of countries with little or no oil wealth. The book
posits that oil wealth charts a positive relationship with citizens’ attitudes
about government performance. The more oil wealth a country has, the more
likely it is that citizens will view their government as effective at managing
the national economy, providing essential goods and services, and protecting
society from destructive forces. These attitudes in turn shape the ways that
citizens understand and evaluate the need for political reforms. The more oil
wealth a country has, the more likely it is that citizens will be skeptical about
the merits of democracy and fearful about the destabilizing effects of demo-
cratic reform.
Yet not all hydrocarbon citizens are enthusiastic about their government
and opposed to democratic reform. In any oil-producing nation, citizens can
have unique circumstances and experiences that influence how they evaluate
their government and the need for political change. A citizen who receives a
valuable, oil-funded benefit—such as a good government job—is expected
to hold more positive perceptions of the government compared to a fellow
citizen who is in need of decent work. By contrast, a citizen who lives close
to the oil-production sites—and may have firsthand experience of oil-fueled
conflict—is expected to hold more negative perceptions of the govern-
ment compared to a fellow citizen living far away and sheltered from these
experiences. Hydrocarbon citizens may share certain attitudinal tendencies
as a group, but not all of them think about the government and politics in the
same way.
Hydrocarbon Citizens. Nimah Mazaheri, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197636725.003.0002
This chapter begins with an overview of what scholars currently know

about the effects of oil wealth on countries and their citizens. Next, it lays
out a framework for explaining why oil wealth is associated with more pos-
itive attitudes about the government. It outlines three reasons. First, these
attitudes are a logical response to the unpredictable and contradictory effects
of oil on economies and societies. Second, these attitudes are a consequence
of the history, geography, and technology of oil production in the Middle
East. A final reason is explained by the ideational influence of nationaliza-
tion movements which followed decades of exploitation from Western oil
companies. The chapter then turns to the issue of how to explain variation in
attitudes within a single hydrocarbon nation. It discusses the characteristics
and circumstances that are expected to cause subtle but important variation
in political attitudes: a citizen’s occupation, level of education, sense of eco-
nomic security, and geographic proximity to the oil wealth.
Understanding Rentier States
Many of the widespread ideas about oil’s political, economic, and social
consequences are rooted in the literature on “rentierism” and “rentier states.”
Here a few words are in order to explain these terms and the word “rent,”
upon which they are based. A rent is commonly defined as a substantial and
largely unearned profit, return, or benefit. Rents typically consist of pre-
sent or future payments in the form of money or items and services of value.
Rents can be received by people, firms, or governments. It is easy to see why
the word “rent” is used to talk about oil: historically, the profit margins from
the oil industry were incredibly high (well above the value of labor used), and
the discovery of oil was largely based on geological luck (profits were reaped
rather than earned).
A rentier state is a country whose total wealth is substantially derived from
external sources, such as the sale of oil.1 Although the term “rentier state” is
occasionally applied to non-resource producers or countries in other situ-
ations, beginning in the 1970s the rentier state literature started to focus
mainly on oil producers. “Rent-seeking” is another term commonly used
when talking about oil. It refers to behavior by people, firms, or governments
that is focused on obtaining or increasing rents. Some of these behaviors
can be categorized as lobbying, corruption, regulatory capture, or market
manipulation.2
A Theory about Hydrocarbon Citizens 15
One of the most widely discussed aspects of rentierism is how oil revenues
alter the nature of the relationship between government and society. In the
vast majority of oil-rich rentier states today, the government either owns and
produces the oil, or it receives royalties from foreign companies that produce
the oil. Either way, the government—not society—collects and controls the
oil money. Hazem Beblawi calls this a “fact of paramount importance, cut-
ting across the whole of the social fabric of the economy affecting the role of
the state in the society.”3 Controlling the oil money empowers governments
in many ways. In one sense, the oil money directly enriches leaders and
politicians, thereby increasing their autonomy from other powerful pres-
sure groups such as business elites or opposition parties.4 At the same time,
it boosts the functions and decision-making power of leaders and the bu-
reaucracy because crucial decisions must be made about how the oil money
is spent.
As long as the oil money is flowing, it would seem that rentier states are
in an enviable position. Unlike most countries, which must tax citizens or
firms to raise money, rentier states can rely on the constant stream of oil
money to grow the economy and address society’s needs. The benefits of oil
then reach citizens and households in a variety of possible ways. The govern-
ment can distribute the benefits broadly, as Kuwait did when it began gen-
erous provisions of health services, education, and social welfare after oil was
discovered.5 The government can target the distribution, as Iran did when
it increased infrastructure spending in rural and poor urban communities
after the 1979 revolution.6 Sometimes oil wealth is distributed in the form
of cash, as was the case when Kuwait decided in 2011 to give $3,600 to every
citizen (born and unborn).7 Or it is distributed in the form of non-cash sub-
sidies toward fuel or common household staples. For many years, and in spite
of some reforms recently, Middle Eastern oil producers have been among the
world’s leaders in providing gasoline subsidies to citizens.8
In nearly all rentier states, one of the main ways that oil revenues are dis-
tributed is through government jobs. Working for the government is the
main goal, and likely destination, for most citizens living in a rentier state
today. Civil servants in rentier states often receive a variety of other oil-
funded benefits, such as free housing, subsidized loans, and frequent wage
increases.9 The oil-producing states in the Gulf region have historically been
the most generous nations when it comes to offering government jobs to their
citizens: it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the national labor forces
in these countries are directly or indirectly employed by the government.10
Government jobs are a perquisite that took off during the oil booms of the
1970s, when the vast sums of petrodollars led to a rapid expansion of bureau-
cracies.11 Yet many observe that this practice has led to a sense of entitlement
among hydrocarbon citizens and an expectation that a well-paid govern-
ment job is a “birthright.”12
According to the rentier state argument, as oil producers distribute
benefits to the people, the nature of state-society relations is altered. Oil
revenues allow governments to organize the polity in a “top-down” fashion,
using their control over the oil money to facilitate their autonomy from so-
cial groups and to create a submissive population that is dependent on the
government’s generosity.13 Some argue that this can delay capitalist develop-
ment, such as an independent private sector, and creates “a nation of citizens
bereft of class interests or identities.”14 It is also thought to foster a society
composed of “mini-rentiers”: ordinary citizens who are dependent on gov-
ernment largess to maintain their quality of life. It has been said of the Gulf
oil producers that their citizens’ motto can be summarized as follows: “Ask
not what you can do for your country, ask rather what your country can do
for you.”15
Many of the writings on rentier states observe that citizens become
depoliticized after the discovery of oil. As Jill Crystal noted in her study of
Kuwait and Qatar, “Oil allows the state to weaken civil society.”16 It is also
assumed that citizens will be less likely to challenge the status quo or try to
“renegotiate” a social contract that exchanges oil-funded benefits for political
quiescence.17 For that matter, a government with vast sums of oil money is
less likely to want to alter the status quo on its own. In reality, since it does not
need a broad base of popular support to rule, its leaders can be expected to
use the oil money to erect barriers to thwart challengers.18 Insulated from so-
cietal pressures and able to buy off powerful social groups through distribu-
tion, the argument goes, rentier states move toward autocracy—and remain
autocratic—over time.
Altogether, the rentier state argument makes bold assertions. But it tends
to oversimplify the effects of oil. Most contemporary scholars find the rela-
tionship between governments and their citizens in these states to be com-
plex and conditional rather than deterministic. Indeed, not all rentier states
benefited from oil revenues at the same time in their country’s economic
and political development. Although it may seem obvious, the onset of oil
does not occur on a “blank sociopolitical slate.”19 Instead, oil “is inserted
into an already existing political landscape of forces, identities, and forms of
power.”20 The role of history, institutional development, social conflict, elite

decision-making, and cultural factors can all crucially matter in explaining
the state-society relations we observe today among rentier states.21
Additionally, the amount of distributions varies considerably among ren-
tier states and is far from uniform. Government spending in Qatar over the
last half century looks quite different from spending in Iraq. Rentier states
also vary in their capacity and skill at distribution. Despite Libya’s immense
oil wealth, Qadhafi “mismanaged his distributive capabilities to a spectac-
ular degree.”22 Furthermore, the patterns of distribution in rentier states are
often related to a country’s deeply entrenched historical, ethnic, cultural, or
religious practices. Domestic social dynamics can be important. Research by
Rosie Bsheer suggests that regional-based, counter-state movements helped
to push Saudi Arabia’s monarchy to generously distribute the benefits of oil.23
In Bahrain, there is evidence of selective distribution along sectarian, Sunni-
Shiite lines rather than a “universal rentier social contract.”24
One of the more questionable assumptions of the rentier state argument
is that citizens will remain compliant—even submissive—if the govern-
ment continually buys them off with subsidies and distributions. But there
are many reasons why citizens would choose to not rise up against the state
(or to do so), irrespective of the level of distribution or characteristics of the
national economy. During the Arab Spring, non-oil factors like the legacies
of nation-building programs and nationalistic myths were important in de-
fining the nature and scope of citizen activism among Gulf states.25 The re-
ality is that ongoing political quietism is rarely a feature in any country, and
rentier state dynamics may weaken one group politically while empowering
another. Hootan Shambayati has argued that one unintended consequence of
rentierism in the Middle East is that it results in Islamist movements gaining
influence over time. Since oil wealth already resolves economic concerns,
“culture and ideology become the main arenas of [state-society] conflict.”26
Despite its shortcomings, the rentier state argument remains one of the
most influential theoretical contributions to our understanding of the Middle
East today.27 The sizable body of research on rentier states has generated in-
sightful observations about the political, economic, and social patterns
that unfold in the context of oil wealth. But many view the argument’s
assumptions about state-society relations as inaccurate. Although oil may
empower leaders at the expense of citizens, there is little evidence that citi-
zens remain powerless or politically inactive in rentier states. The rentier state
argument also tends to assume that leaders and the average citizen will hold
political interests that are fundamentally in opposition to each other—but

the average citizen is simply too weak or too beaten down by repression to
act on their own interests. Yet it may be that just as oil shifts leaders’ interests
toward distribution, personal enrichment, and autocratic stability, so too will
many citizens shift their interests in the same direction.
The Rentier Mentality
One of the core arguments about rentier states is that a “rentier mentality”
develops among the population. This argument posits that people who live in
rentier states are overly reliant on government distributions for their survival
and tend to possess a weak work ethic that leads them to shy away from risk-
taking and entrepreneurial activities. Beblawi explains:
The basic assumption about the rentier mentality and that which
distinguishes it from conventional economic behavior is that it embodies
a break in the work-reward causation. Reward—income or wealth—is not
related to work and risk bearing, rather to chance or situation. For a rentier,
reward becomes a windfall gain, an isolated fact, situational or accidental as
against the conventional outlook where reward is integrated in a process as
the end result of a long, systematic and organized production circuit. The
contradiction between production and rentier ethics is, thus, glaring.28
If the rentier mentality argument is applied to businesses in rentier states,

it suggests that business owners are cognitively aware that higher profits are
more likely to occur through close ties to politicians than through hard
work, pluck, and merit. Or as Steffen Hertog observed in Saudi Arabia,
“Individual strategies to get a finger into the pie are more rewarding than
productive activities.”29 Yet this leads to corruption and bribery, which are
found to occur at a greater degree in places with abundant oil wealth.30
It also can hamper the rise of new firms because budding entrepreneurs
regard the playing field as unfair and the government as putting little em-
phasis on issues relating to doing business.31 For existing business owners,
time and resources are devoted to lobbying, rent-seeking, and bribery, as
opposed to innovation and cost-cutting. Beblawi argues, “Dynamic, in-
novative, risk-bearing, Schumpeter’s entrepreneur is the antithesis of the
rentier.”32
If the rentier mentality argument is applied to the average citizen in ren-

tier states, it suggests that generous governmental distribution of goods and
services will affect their motivation to work hard and take financial risks. If
a citizen’s basic needs and more are satisfied through government spending,
this reduces financial pressure on their household and they should focus
less on seeking out wealth-maximizing opportunities. Higher household
transfers in rentier states improve a citizen’s quality of life and should cor-
respondingly ease the burden of work and reduce the pressures to save for
the future. In many rentier states, a citizen is practically entitled to a well-
paying government job. With a good salary, shortened workday, and little
prospect of being dismissed, they may be more likely to shirk responsibility
and underperform.
In essence, the rentier mentality argument imagines that questions about
risk-versus-reward are not applicable in rentier states. If government-funded
benefits provide families with comfortable lifestyles, then it may seem ir-
rational to seek out financially risky entrepreneurship or undertake stren-
uous work. If one has a guaranteed, well-paying, low-stress position in the
bureaucracy, then it may seem irrational to work hard while on the clock.
According to the rentier mentality argument, the average citizen’s most ra-
tional course of action is to enjoy the government’s generous distributions
and to avoid working too hard at guaranteed government jobs. Business
owners’ most rational course is to seek out corrupt relations with politicians
and bureaucrats, rather than innovate or creatively cut costs to better com-
pete with others. Beblawi argues that the rentier mentality has become a se-
rious problem: “The oil disease has contaminated all of the Arab world. . . .
Income is no longer a reward of serious and hard work, it is very often related
to special circumstances, chance, location, etc. In a word, we are living in a
rentier universe which has affected both the state and the citizen.”33
Although the rentier mentality argument can be expressed using the lan-
guage of incentives and rational decision-making, following Beblawi and
others cited above, it is not uncommon to find the same argument expressed
using pejorative descriptors like “lazy” and “greedy.” In fact, this version of
the argument has been around for a very long time. In the fourteenth cen-
tury, the Tunisian philosopher Ibn Khaldun warned against “weak minded
persons” who seek to “discover property under the surface of the earth [min-
eral wealth] and make some profit from it.”34 In the sixteenth century, the
French philosopher Jean Bodin wrote: “Men of a fat and fertile soil are most
commonly effeminate and cowards; whereas contrariwise a barren country
makes men temperate by necessity, and by consequence careful, vigilant, and

industrious.”35 Basically, Bodin says that places with “fat and fertile soil” (i.e.,
resource-rich lands) are homes to weak, lazy, and wasteful people.
Similar claims can be found today. Consider what was said by Nenadi
Usman, Nigeria’s minister of finance from 2006 to 2007: “If we hadn’t discov-
ered oil, we would have been better off today. . . . Oil has made us lazy. When
I was growing up I knew I had to use my brains to succeed. The oil genera-
tion doesn’t feel this.”36 Relatedly, an Omani public servant said that their
country’s youth “are passive, unmotivated, no incentives and they want eve-
rything free. It’s a very big challenge for government now.”37 It was similarly
observed in Libya that “citizens are not very productive.”38 Shaikha Abdulla
al-Misnad, former president of Qatar University, made the controversial
statement at a public forum: “[I]‌n my country, the youth—or all the national
population—look at things as entitlement, not like an opportunity [where]
you need to take advantage of it and work hard on it.”39
To be sure, assessing the scientific merit of the rentier mentality argu-
ment is a big challenge. To my knowledge, the earliest attempt to do so was
by Monte Palmer, Ibrahim Fahad Alghofaily, and Saud Mohammed Alnimir,
researchers at Florida State University. In 1980, they conducted surveys
with 1,300 Saudi Arabians: 600 high schoolers, 400 university students, and
300 civil servants. Their surveys found that Saudi Arabians are unlikely to
be “risk-taking” or “achievement-oriented” and tend to be “psychologically
aloof from the productive sectors of the economy.”40 They concluded that
Saudi Arabians place a low value on manual labor, and that is even true about
groups that should be more receptive to it, such as those who are illiterate.41
A similar study by two of the authors focused on bureaucrats and found that
“the lethargy of the Saudi bureaucracy is deeply rooted in Saudi society.”42
While there are concerns about the methodologies used, these studies
were the first attempts to test the rentier mentality argument about how risk,
prestige, and work are valued by people in these states. But their findings
are not generalizable and there are no reference groups with whom to make
comparisons. How concepts like risk, work, and prestige are understood and
valued are likely to vary among respondents. Causality is never established
because we are unable to get a sense of how Saudi Arabians thought about
risk, work, and prestige before the dawn of oil. Furthermore, one must be
suspicious about the suggestion that people in rentier states tend to exhibit
similar personality traits or possess immutable psychological attributes. This
becomes a kind of “pop psychology” and reeks of orientalism.43
Fortunately, there are better ways of evaluating aspects of the rentier men-
tality argument and testing how oil affects individuals in cognitive and be-
havioral ways. Justin Gengler’s study of Bahrain is one example. Based
on in-depth fieldwork and surveys, he finds that Sunni-Shiite sectarian
differences in Bahrain shape the patterns of governmental distribution as
well as individual political attitudes and behavior. Gengler concludes that the
Bahraini state does not employ a universalist model of distribution, but in-
stead rewards certain citizens over others based on confessional politics.44
Calvert Jones’s research on the UAE is another example. She finds that the
government’s social engineering programs increase young people’s civic-
mindedness and sense of patriotism, but they also increase notions of en-
titlement and dampen the entrepreneurial spirit.45 Jessie Moritz’s research
on Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar uses rich individual-level data to challenge
assumptions about universalist distribution and political quietism in rentier
states.46
The research by Gengler, Jones, and Moritz is impressive in that it examines
how oil, rentierism, and distribution affect ordinary people’s attitudes,
values, and behaviors. Together they outline a bright future for uncovering
the micro-level effects of an oil-based economy, as opposed to continually fo-
cusing on the macro-and national-level effects. Although we should remain
highly critical of studies that seek to show how certain (undesirable and im-
mutable) personality traits are associated with living in rentier states, there
is considerable room for more analysis of the effects of oil wealth on citizens’
attitudes, beliefs, and values, as well as their decision-making and behavior.
This book adopts a similar goal in seeking to shed light on how oil wealth
affects citizens’ political attitudes, beliefs, and values.
The Unpredictability of Oil
Since World War II, no other commodity has captured people’s imaginations
quite like oil. For residents of economically depressed places, a sudden oil
discovery brings hope for a better and more prosperous future.47 Oil is essen-
tially free money and a potential solution to problems such as poverty and a
lack of opportunity. However, increasing attention has gone to the negative
effects that can accompany a significant oil discovery: autocracy, corruption,
unimpressive economic growth, unwanted societal dislocations, and even
violence.
This book argues that the unpredictability of an oil-based economy plays

an important part in shaping the average person’s attitudes and ideas about
the government and its policies. Since an economy based on oil exports
carries the potential for promise as well as peril, the average person by neces-
sity looks to a powerful organizational system—the national government—
to guide the sector, steer the benefits to the population, and mitigate the
commodity’s harmful side effects. Over time, as oil plays an important part
in a country’s development, the government solidifies its role as a vital ec-
onomic manager and provider of oil-funded benefits. This helps to foster
a popular image (whether accurate or not) of the government as effective,
helpful, and responsive to the public’s needs.
Oil is a highly volatile commodity with unpredictable effects on the coun-
tries that produce it in large quantities.48 On the one hand, oil can certainly
generate many positive outcomes. The striking levels of wealth and pros-
perity among the Gulf oil producers are undoubtedly the best examples of
this. Many of the people in these places understandably conceive of oil as a
blessing that was given to them by God, nature, or luck.49 Yet we also know
that oil can be associated with volatile and underperforming economies,
stable autocratic rule, rampant corruption, and societal fragmentation—as
people living in Algeria, Iraq, or Libya could attest. For them, oil has been a
mixed blessing. They would furthermore and correctly point out that even
when oil brings incredible wealth, opportunity, and upgrades to public serv-
ices, it is often accompanied by repression, corruption, and inequality.
It is easy to find hopeful personal statements about the transformative
power of oil. Many of these are couched in religious language and imagery.
The discovery of oil is portrayed as the result of divine intervention or a
blessing from God. Abdallah Jum’ah, former president and CEO of Saudi
Aramco (the Saudi Arabian Oil Company), told 60 Minutes in 2008: “Oil is
a gift from God. Its recovery is the work of men.”50 Many writers and public
figures across the Muslim world view oil as a gift from Allah, and some claim
that the Qu’ran contains references to the future discovery of oil.51 Invoking a
higher power to explain the discovery of oil is not unique to the Middle East
and Muslims. In the Niger Delta, members of the Ugbo community use an
ancestral belief system to tell a story about how oil came to them. This same
story is then translated by local Christians using the biblical story about Jesus
making them “fishers of men”—but the word “fish” is replaced with “oil.”52
People have long used religious symbolism to talk about oil’s transforma-
tive power. “Manna” is a word frequently used to talk about oil.53 According
to the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qu’ran, manna was the
food miraculously provided by God to the Israelites when they were in the
desert. The phrase “manna from heaven” appears as early as 1936 to describe
the oil rents received by Middle Eastern governments.54
Places where oil is discovered are often described using religious imagery.
In Abdelrahman Munif ’s Cities of Salt, widely considered the best novel on
the Middle East’s experience with oil, the place where oil is discovered is
named “Wadi al-Uyoun.” In the first pages, Munif describes Wadi al-Uyoun
as an “earthly paradise. . . . He who had created the world and humankind
had created, at the same time, Wadi al-Uyoun in this very spot as a salva-
tion from death in the treacherous, accursed desert.”55 In Upton Sinclair’s
1927 novel Oil!, which served as inspiration for the 2007 Academy Award–
winning film There Will Be Blood, the setting for the oil discovery in the story
is a town that is unambiguously named “Paradise.”56
Employing religious imagery to explain an oil discovery is not surprising
given the fact that oil bursting from the ground appears to symbolize free-
flowing wealth in answer to the prayers of the poor and desperate. Thus, oil is
often interpreted by the average person as a powerful symbol of benevolence
and a permanent inhabitant of their “expectations, sensibilities, imagin-
ations, and bodies.”57 While attaching divine significance to oil’s discovery
helps to explain how it came about, it also raises the stakes of the event in the
eyes of average citizens. If oil is truly a gift from above, then it should not be
squandered. Zayed Al Zayani, Bahrain’s minister of industry, commerce, and
tourism, used this logic to describe an oil discovery as “a gift from God, and
you shouldn’t say no to gifts from God.”58
At the very same time, it is easy to find those who dispute the idea that
oil has religious significance and describe it in the exact opposite way.
A voluminous body of work on the “resource curse” and “paradox of plenty”
highlights the negative effects of oil on governments, economies, and soci-
eties. Although there is disagreement among scholars about the nature of
these effects, many academic studies link oil to uneven development, au-
tocracy, corruption, civil war, gender inequality, volatile policymaking,
lack of government transparency, underinvestment in schools, and more.59
Complementing these findings are pessimistic statements from influential
people who have long lived in oil’s midst. Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s
minister of oil from 1962 to 1986, famously quipped: “All in all, I wish we
had discovered water.”60 Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, Venezuela’s minister of
oil and one of the founders of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC), said: “You think we are lucky. I don’t think so. . . . I call
petroleum ‘the devil’s excrement.’ ”61 Moisés Naím, journalist and editor-in-
chief of Foreign Policy, compared oil to an “autoimmune disease.”62 A col-
orful metaphor compared oil to zaqqum, the “cursed tree of hell” mentioned
in the Qu’ran.63 One of the interpretations of zaqqum is that the inhabitants
of hell must eat the fruit from this tree, which painfully explodes in their
bodies upon consumption.
Historical narratives about oil tend to be dark and riddled with themes of
greed, corruption, and violence. The award-winning writer Amitav Ghosh
describes the history of Western oil companies in the Middle East as “a
matter of embarrassment verging on the unspeakable, the pornographic.”64
Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Prize lauds the merits of oil
while recounting many examples of oil wreaking havoc on communities. In
1865, a few years after the world’s first commercial oil discovery, a newspaper
editorial read: “The oil and land excitement . . . has already become a sort of
epidemic. . . . The social circle is broken; the sanctuary is forsaken; and all
our habits, and notions, and associations for half a century are turned topsy-
turvey in the headlong rush for riches.”65 White Earth, a 2014 Academy
Award–nominated documentary about North Dakota’s shale oil boom, per-
fectly depicts the contradictory impacts of oil on a community through the
words and experiences of children.66 From the children’s perspective, the ec-
onomic opportunity created by the oil boom is accompanied by damage to
the environment, a breakdown in community, and the deterioration of their
own family structure.
The sharply contrasting ways in which people experience and interpret
the impacts from oil highlight the commodity’s contradictory effects. For
the average person, the discovery of oil should be an occasion to celebrate,
but given what is widely known about oil’s negative effects there is a palpable
sense of caution. On the one hand, people experience a sense of hope and
urgency about using oil to improve the country and lift the population out
of poverty. On the other hand, they fear negative outcomes, such as greed
and corruption, stolen or improperly allocated rents, poor decision-making,
traumatic societal dislocations, and the threat of violence.67 Oil has tremen-
dous potential to positively transform a nation, but it remains an unpredict-
able force.
People who live in oil-producing countries are acutely aware of oil’s role
in determining the overall health of the national economy. Much like the
price of oil, their perceptions about the national economy are volatile and
change during periods of boom and bust. This is seen by looking at Arab
Barometer survey data on 14 Middle Eastern countries from 2006 to 2019.
Survey respondents who live in the high/moderate rentier states over this
period (Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia) are more
likely to believe that the national economy is doing well when the price of
oil is high, but less likely to believe so when the price of oil is low. However,
the price of oil has no relationship with the economic perceptions of people
who live in non-oil states or those that generate a far lower amount of oil in-
come (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, West Bank/Gaza,
and Yemen).68 Figure 2.1 depicts these contrasting relationships. Figure 2.2
displays the OPEC Basket price from 2006 to 2019, highlighting the variation
in the price of oil over this time period.69
Due to oil’s unpredictable and volatile nature, the average person looks
to the government to help tame and direct the transformative power of
oil to benefit society. In countries where oil plays an important role in the
economy, it is expected that the average person will justify a greater reliance
on the government’s powers of organization and rationalization—indeed,
Respondents Living in High or Respondents Living in Non-Oil

Moderate Rentier States or Low Rentier States
.5 .4
.4
.3
Probability
.3
.2
.2
.1
.1
0 0
40 60 80 100 40 60 80 100
Oil Price Oil Price
“How would you evaluate the current Very Bad

economic situation in your country?” Bad
Good
Very Good
Figure 2.1. The price of oil and perceptions about national economic situation,
14 Middle Eastern countries, 2006–2019.
110
100
90
US Dollars per Barrel
80
70
60
50
40
30
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Figure 2.2. Average annual OPEC Basket Price in US dollars, 2006–2019.
no other system in a given nation has the same capacity or degree of au-
thority. This justification holds, even given the understanding that abuse of
the government’s powers by politicians, civil servants, and elites can lead to
corruption and competition over the distribution of oil rents. But the simple
fact is that without a functioning governmental authority and bureaucratic
leadership to manage and direct the benefits of oil, the public has reason to
fear negative outcomes such as overproduction and squandered rents, plun-
dering by foreigners and greedy investors, and violent competition over the
control of the oil. As time passes and the public continues to rely on the tools
and functions of the government to shepherd oil’s benefits and ideally miti-
gate these potential problems, the government is able to cultivate a popular
image of itself as vital, helpful, and responsive.
Historical Legacies of Oil
Another unique feature of the Middle East’s oil-producing countries is that

the vast majority of citizens do not experience the benefits from oil directly—
they experience them indirectly through the tools and functions of the
government. This has meant that, since the earliest days of oil production,
people in these countries have endowed the government with powers and
obligations that go far beyond those of a country whose economy is not de-
pendent on oil. As the government is called upon to undertake a wide range
of roles and responsibilities related to oil—including the management of its
revenues and the channeling of its benefits—this has helped to strengthen its
image as a generous provider in the eyes of the average person.
Geography factors into how people benefit from an economic boom. Oil is
a geographically concentrated resource, and production can only take place
at the site in which it is discovered. Yet in many of the Middle East’s oil pro-
ducers, oil has been discovered not in urban, highly populated areas, but in
remote areas, far away from large populations and labor pools. In Algeria,
oil was discovered in Edjeleh and Hassi Messaoud, which lie hundreds of
kilometers from the densely populated coastal area. In Iran, oil was dis-
covered in Khuzestan province in sparsely populated areas that lie almost
a thousand kilometers from Tehran and far from other large cities. The ma-
jority of Saudi Arabia’s largest oil fields were found in the Eastern Province,
which at the time was thinly populated and which is located hundreds of
kilometers from Riyadh and more than a thousand kilometers from Mecca
and Medinah.
This spatial mismatch between the locations of oil discoveries and large
labor pools has meant that most Algerians, Iranians, and Saudi Arabians
would have needed to migrate to oil regions to benefit directly from the oil
industry through employment or other opportunities. But migrating for
work opportunities, whether internationally or domestically, has always
been a risky proposition. For most citizens of these countries, relocation to
oil sites would have been financially unfeasible or less attractive than finding
other options (even less lucrative ones) closer to home. Furthermore, most
unemployed people at the time of oil discoveries did not have the educational
or skill requirements to work in the oil sector.70 In effect, the geography of
Middle Eastern oil made it difficult for the average person to experience
direct benefits through a job in the industry or other economic opportuni-
ties. Instead, most citizens had to rely on government largess to share in the
profits from oil.
Another geographical factor that affects the ability of locals to directly
benefit from oil is that roughly 30 percent of the Middle East’s oil is located
offshore.71 There are crucial differences between offshore and onshore oil
production that make it more difficult for local populations to take advan-
tage of the former. Compared to onshore production, offshore production
generally requires a larger capital investment, more advanced technology,

and more skilled and experienced workers.72 Initially, Middle Eastern
governments were forced to rely on Western capital and expertise to produce
offshore oil; these firms were given the power to dictate labor practices and
were allowed to discriminate against locals seeking work. Studies in other
contexts find that local employment in offshore production is typically re-
stricted to the lowest echelon of work73 and, overall, offshore managers feel
less pressure than onshore managers to hire locals.74 The simple fact that off-
shore production takes place in coastal waters, geographically isolated from
a community of residents, means that societal pressures to hire locals may be
lower compared to onshore production.
The technology of oil production also affects the ability of Middle Eastern
citizens to directly benefit from oil wealth and forces them to rely on the gov-
ernment. Unlike agriculture, manufacturing, or other resource sectors like
coal, oil is one of the most capital-intensive sectors in the world and requires
relatively little labor relative to capital investment. Getting oil out of the
ground is an expensive process, but it is not one that demands the strength or
skill of a large number of workers. This is one reason why the oil sector typi-
cally employs a small slice of the local population in spite of its oversized con-
tribution to national economies. In 1955, it was estimated that 5,899 Iranians
worked for the country’s oil consortium, which included the oil fields, the
main refinery, and the head office in Tehran. That number comprised just
0.1 percent of the Iranian male working population at the time. In Iraq, the
share of Iraqis working for the oil consortium in 1948 was a similarly small
fraction of the male working population, 0.8 percent. In Saudi Arabia, the
figure was higher, but still very low, at 1.3 percent of the Saudi Arabian male
working population.75
Half a century later, the situation was the same. During the 1990s, it was
still the case that less than 2 percent of Saudi Arabia’s and Algeria’s working
populations were employed in the oil sector.76 As of 2012, Iran’s oil sector
employs 150,878 persons, which represents just 0.7 percent of the country’s
working population.77 Today, whenever new oil jobs become available, com-
petition for them is fierce. In 2018, Iraq’s government promised to create
10,000 new oil jobs after large-scale protests took hold in the oil-rich Basra
province over unemployment and other grievances. These were the first new
jobs created in the oil sector since the government instituted a hiring freeze
in 2016. The Basra Statistics Office anticipated that for every new job posted
there would be 50 applicants.78
It is often argued that oil creates a multiplier effect on the local economy—
whereby non-oil sectors grow as the result of an oil boom—but there is mixed
evidence about the magnitude of this effect.79 Early observations about the
Middle East suggest a weak multiplier effect, as the oil sector was largely dis-
connected from the rest of the national economy.80 Terry Lynn Karl states
that oil fosters “very limited” opportunities for technology diffusion and
infrastructure development, and downstream opportunities are absent or
“competitively disadvantaged.”81 Although the discovery of oil in the Middle
East led to new opportunities in sectors such as transport, food services, and
maintenance, many of these opportunities were captured by non-locals or
were informal, low-paying, and precarious jobs. Today, any multiplier effect
is depressed further by the practice, now standard in Gulf states, of hiring
cheap migrant labor in non-tradeable sectors.82
It may be tempting to assume that one main reason why local workers
have historically failed to take advantage of new opportunities in the oil
sector is because of low levels of human capital at the time when produc-
tion began. In the 1950s, male literacy rates in Algeria, Libya, and Saudi
Arabia were below 20 percent, and in Iran and Iraq they were below 30 per-
cent.83 Furthermore, the largest pools of literate, educated workers were
clustered in urban centers located far away from the major oil fields. When
oil was discovered, scholars remarked on the low levels of human capital in
the oil-producing areas.84 Prior to the discovery of oil in the Gulf, much of
the local population was illiterate and engaged in fishing, pearling, coastal
trade, raising livestock, or agriculture. Many lived in Bedouin communities.
None of these experiences or skillsets was valued by Western oil companies
looking for new workers.
Undoubtedly more important than the issue of human capital was the fact
that Western oil companies adopted discriminatory hiring practices that
prevented most locals from entering the oil sector. For decades, oil com-
panies consciously favored hiring migrant workers from Europe, North
America, and South Asia over locals at almost every skill level. In Saudi
Arabia, the oil company had a policy of discriminating against local Saudi
Arabians in terms of hiring, and those who were hired received lower wages
and had worse living conditions than non–Saudi Arabians.85 Labor practices
were similar in Iran, where the oil company gave preference to non-Iranians
in hiring and maintained stark inequalities in wages and living conditions.86
The mistreatment of Saudi Arabian and Iranian workers resulted in peri-
odic strikes in the oil sectors of both countries. Local workers in the Algerian
and Libyan oil sectors went on strike during the mid-1960s for the same
reasons: discrimination in hiring, inadequate training, and low salaries.87
Although national politicians and the media often pressed the oil com-
panies to hire more locals, the companies were resistant, and many times
the government was complicit. This became an ongoing source of frustra-
tion for local communities, who saw a booming oil industry nearby as the
logical place for new job opportunities. Eventually, the companies began of-
fering education and training programs, and by the late 1950s hundreds of
locals were being trained to work in the oil sectors of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.88 While these opportunities were beneficial for
those lucky enough to receive them, this made a tiny dent in the problem
of national unemployment and the lack of opportunities at the time. Most
locals interpreted these efforts as an attempt by companies to provide the
bare minimum needed to avoid alienating the government or sparking wide-
spread civil disobedience.
The international aspect of oil production adds another layer of detach-
ment from society and forces citizens to rely on their government to convert
the oil wealth into benefits. For many decades, Middle Eastern oil was entirely
dominated by international capital. Unlike a sector such as manufacturing—
which can attract small and large investors, along with domestic and interna-
tional capital, and which is more mobile in terms of geographic location—oil
required huge investments from established, technically capable, foreign oil
companies at geographically fixed production sites. These companies domi-
nated markets and often functioned as extensions of the governments of the
countries where they were based. The average Iranian viewed the British-
owned oil company as a proxy for the British government, and the Iranian
monarchy treated it as such. Saudi Arabians and Algerians viewed American-
and French-owned oil companies in the same way. This made each country’s
oil sector seem like a foreign undertaking and sent the message to locals that
it was off-limits and impenetrable.89 For the average person living in a rentier
state in the Middle East, the oil sector was a distant, foreign-controlled entity
that had little direct impact on their range of opportunities or quality of life.90
Realistically, the only way for the average person to benefit from the
promise of oil was to look to a system of organization and power—the
government—to help direct oil’s transformative potential to the benefit of
society. Oil wealth has no effective value for average citizens until it is sold
and the government, upon collecting the revenues (or royalties), in turn
distributes some of those proceeds to the population. Once oil is discovered,
the government plays a crucial role as an intermediary; the average person

would see few benefits without action by the government. Although some
positive spillover may occur for people living in the immediate oil-producing
region (accompanied, to be sure, by negative spillovers), for the majority of
the population, the oil might as well never have been discovered.
In this sense, people in oil producers become dependent on the tools
and functions of the government to provide opportunities and support to
maintain their quality of life.91 While there are certainly times when the
public perceives the government as failing in its role as distributor of the
oil revenues, the fundamental importance of the government in this role is
rarely questioned. In effect, oil allows the government to justify itself and its
functions, to rationalize its centrality in economic and social realms, and to
promote itself to society in a way that stresses its positive and essential nature.
In non-oil states, however, the argument for a central role of the government
in economic and social realms can be questioned because the govern-
ment does not automatically serve as a key distributor of national wealth
to households. Oil endows governments with a sense of purpose and helps
build the case for their indispensable role in the life of the average citizen.
The Influence of Oil Nationalization Movements
The people of the Middle East were deeply affected by the ideas and
sentiments arising from the oil nationalization movements that began in the
1950s. These movements emerged in response to decades of Western exploi-
tation and called for national governments to assert themselves to increase
their share of oil profits or even expropriate the oil sector altogether. Feelings
of resentment, anger, and nationalistic pride led people to demand that their
governments exert greater control over oil sectors that by now had become
major sources of national wealth.
The story of oil in the Middle East begins with an encounter with the
West. In the early 1900s, a steady stream of fortune-seekers, businessmen,
and geologists from Europe and North America made their way to the re-
gion in search of oil. Arriving in poor countries that had mostly illiterate
populations, they cut deals with leaders whose grip on power was uncertain
and who were in need of money. The Westerners exploited this vulnerability
and extracted favorable concessions from governments before searching for
oil. When they found it, they gave comparatively small royalties to leaders
and began exporting the valuable commodity to the outside world. Within a
few decades, virtually all of the Middle East’s oil was produced by little more
than a handful of Western companies. Today, these companies and their
successors are among the wealthiest corporations on the planet.92
After World War II, the Middle East started to play a more important
role as a global supplier of oil, and these companies began to rake in enor-
mous profits. Yet the people who lived in these countries felt as if they and
their governments were getting the short end of the stick. Words like “im-
perialism” and “exploitation” started to circulate in the local media and
in the speeches and writings of politicians, technocrats, clerics, and labor
leaders. This led to a period of social mobilization in the name of oil na-
tionalization.93 For most, the goal was to kick out the Western companies
and reclaim the oil sector for the people under the management of the gov-
ernment. Although each country ultimately charted a unique path toward
nationalization, how leaders navigated this issue influenced their popularity
and affected the stability of rule. The first major oil nationalization move-
ment occurred in Iran in the early 1950s,94 but similar ones soon appeared
in Iraq, Algeria, and Libya. By 1980, the governments of every major oil-
producing country in the region had gained total or majority control over
their oil sectors.
As Iran was the first country in the Middle East to experience an oil na-
tionalization movement, it ended up having a significant influence on events
in other oil producers.95 Oil was first struck in 1908 in the city of Masjed-
e-Sulaiman, located in Khuzestan province. Initially, the rights to produce
the oil were controlled by William Knox D’Arcy, a British industrialist. Seven
years earlier, D’Arcy had negotiated with Iran’s monarch, Shah Mozaffar al-
Din, and obtained a concession to prospect for oil. D’Arcy was granted the
exclusive right to search for, produce, transport, and sell oil for a 60-year pe-
riod over an area that covered roughly three-quarters of Iran’s total territory.
After discovering oil, D’Arcy became director of the newly formed Anglo-
Persian Oil Company (APOC), which built a refinery in nearby Abadan to
produce Iran’s first barrels of oil.
At the time, the Iranian public was largely opposed to D’Arcy and
APOC’s activities, in part because they occurred during a period when
many European companies and governments were granted valuable trade
concessions by the monarchy. It soon became common to hear outward
criticism of APOC and especially the British government, which was pop-
ularly understood as the driving force behind APOC. As Iran pumped
more and more oil, sporadic labor movements in the oil fields cropped up,
demanding higher wages and better living conditions for local workers. After
World War II, public critiques of APOC and the British government accel-
erated. By this time, many politicians, journalists, technocrats, and ordinary
citizens were arguing that the Iranian government was receiving an unfair
share of the oil profits. Public demonstrations and large strikes in the oil
fields were organized with a focus on pushing the government to nationalize.
The politician Mohammed Mossadegh emerged as the face of this move-
ment, and he would eventually ascend to the office of prime minister of Iran’s
Parliament (Majles). Through his leadership, a coalition of politicians suc-
cessfully pushed through a parliamentary vote in favor of oil nationalization
in the spring of 1951. In the public’s eyes, Iran had finally reclaimed its oil
from greedy, exploitative Westerners. Large crowds erupted in euphoria at
the announcement of nationalization. The party did not last long, however.
Iran’s ruling monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza, reversed the oil nationali-
zation in the fall of 1954 shortly after a US/UK-orchestrated coup toppled
Mossadegh.
Despite the reversal, Iran’s oil nationalization movement had an enormous
impact on the country, the region, and developing nations at the time. For
Iran, it forced a renegotiation of the oil contract between the government
and APOC. Iran would now receive a higher share of the oil profits via a con-
sortium. For the Middle East, following Iran’s experiences, oil nationaliza-
tion became a “central issue” that “joined the economic history of the region
with its political history.”96 Soon, politicians and technocrats throughout the
Middle East started to push the idea that oil nationalization was a basic right
of sovereignty. From a global perspective, Iran’s nationalization movement
influenced international law and strengthened the idea that all countries
have the right to nationalize their natural resources to best utilize them for
the benefit of the people.97 Oil nationalization movements melded with the
struggle for decolonization and helped to underline the point that a devel-
oping nation can achieve political independence from the West, but it still
needs to fight for economic independence.98
Powerful sentiments grew out of Iran’s oil nationalization move-
ment and soon found resonance across the populations of other oil-
producing countries. One of these sentiments was a collective feeling of
resentment over Western exploitation of their country’s oil reserves. An
analysis of the Middle East observed “an underlying sense of grievance
against the oil companies” at the time.99 In newspapers and politicians’
speeches, emotion-laden language was used to rally populations to push

their governments toward bold actions against the companies—using words
and phrases like “plunder,” “rape,” “theft,” “stolen resources,” and “enslave-
ment.” Some of the language was militant and revolutionary, particularly
among exploited oil workers, communism-inspired writers, and nation-
alist politicians. But as time wore on, extreme language became mainstream.
These collective feelings of resentment, anger, and unfairness helped to fuel
oil nationalization movements across the Middle East.100
Another powerful sentiment was a sense of urgency to “right the wrongs of
the past.” Many politicians, technocrats, and journalists emphasized that oil
producers were at a crucial crossroads in history and that it was imperative
to immediately reverse the decisions of previous governments that had cut
deals with Western oil companies. In this way, blame for the current situation
was placed not just on the oil companies, but also on past leaders, who were
viewed as greedy, stupid, or corrupt despots who never truly represented the
will of the people. In Iraq, the government that succeeded the 1958 over-
throw of the Hashemite monarchy argued that a higher share of the oil profits
was deserved because the monarchy “acted with disgraceful indifference to
the interests of its people, if it did not actually conspire with imperialism to
cheat them of their heritage.”101
Proponents of oil nationalization called on their governments to liberate
the oil sector to regain national wealth, dignity, and freedom from Western
exploitation. Achieving this liberation was not simply an economic act. It also
had an encompassing political and social significance, serving as “the foun-
dation for policy” and a “regenerative vision of the future.”102 In achieving
sovereign control over their oil sectors, governments would now have a cen-
tral function in the management of the sector and—more importantly from
the public’s perspective—making decisions about how oil revenues were
spent. Convincing the public to trust the government to perform these duties
was not difficult. The alternative was to live with the status quo: a continued
exploitation of the country’s wealth by companies that most people saw as
“alien intruders.”103
Through the speeches and writings of politicians, clerics, technocrats,
and the media, these ideas and sentiments spread among the public and
influenced the ways that average citizens looked at their government. In
Iran, Mossadegh portrayed himself as the leader of the oil nationalization
movement and the politician most connected to all classes of Iranian so-
ciety.104 Through fiery speeches, he characterized APOC as an imperialistic
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LXVI
A person who is full of secrets is a knave or a fool, or both.
LXVII
The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in
concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The
schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and
material part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and
unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the
other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all
that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in
order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he
should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible
conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the
feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any
circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of
others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants
on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human
nature.—‘The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not,
and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our
virtues.’
LXVIII
People cry out against the preposterous absurdity of such
representations as the German inventions of the Devil’s Elixir and
the Bottle Imp. Is it then a fiction that we see? Or is it not rather a
palpable reality that takes place every day and hour? Who is there
that is not haunted by some heated phantom of his brain, some
wizard spell, that clings to him in spite of his will, and hurries him on
to absurdity or ruin? There is no machinery or phantasmagoria of a
melo-drame, more extravagant than the workings of the passions.
Mr. Farley may do his worst with scaly forms, with flames, and
dragon’s wings: but after all, the true demon is within us. How many,
whose senses are shocked at the outward spectacle, and who turn
away startled or disgusted might say, pointing to their bosoms, ‘The
moral is here!’
LXIX
Mr. L—— asked Sir Thomas —— who had been intimate with the
Prince, if it was true that he was so fine a gentleman as he was
generally represented? Sir Thomas —— made answer, that it was
certainly true that the Prince was a very fine gentleman indeed: ‘but,’
added he, ‘if I am to speak my mind, the finest gentleman I ever saw,
was Sadi Baba, the ambassador to Constantinople, from the Usbek
Tartars.’
LXX
‘Man is in no haste to be venerable.’ At present, it seems as if there
were no occasion to become so. People die as usual; but it is not the
fashion to grow old. Formerly, men subsided and settled down into a
respectable old age at forty, as they did into a bob-wig, and a brown
coat and waistcoat of a certain cut. The father of a family no longer
pretended to pass for a gay young fellow, after he had children grown
up; and women dwindled, by regular and willing gradations, into
mothers and grandmothers, transferring their charms and
pretensions to a blooming posterity; but these things are never
thought of now-a-days. A matron of sixty flaunts it in ‘La Belle
Assemblée’s dresses for May:’ and certainly M. Stultz never inquires
into the grand climacteric of his customers. Dress levels all ages as
well as all ranks.
A CHAPTER ON EDITORS
The Monthly Magazine.]

[November, 1830.
‘Our withers are unwrung.’
Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is

Scotch is not approved?) a ‘sort of tittle-tattle‘—difficult to deal with,
dangerous to discuss. ‘A capital subject for an article, great scope,
complete novelty, and ground never touched upon!’ Very true; for
what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none
that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common
foibles of his tribe. What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in
manuscript, turns to a compliment in print—the exception in this, as
in other cases, proves the rule—an inference we have endeavoured to
express in our motto.
With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual
infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and
honorary situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they
are chosen to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to
the reading public; but they soon fancy that the situation has been
invented for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the
abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who imagine that
they are the state. Editors are but men, and easily ‘lay the flattering
unction to their souls’ that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or
the Review they conduct. They have got a little power in their hands,
and they wish to employ that power (as all power is employed) to
increase the sense of self-importance; they borrow a certain dignity
from their situation as arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and
they are determined to keep it to the detriment of their employers
and of every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should be any
thing behind the Editor’s chair, greater than the Editor’s chair. That
is a scandal to be prevented at all risks. The publication they are
entrusted with for the amusement and edification of the town, they
convert, in theory and practice, into a stalking-horse of their own
vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a whole work
themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as they might
have written: it is to have the Editor’s mark, like the broad R, on
every page, or the N. N. at the Tuileries; it is to bear the same image
and superscription—every line is to be upon oath: nothing is to be
differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor could have
done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in dulness
and insipidity.
It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. As
Mr. Horne Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Kenyon,
‘There are two parties in this cause—myself and the jury; the judge
and the crier of the court attend in their respective places:’ so in
every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties—the
writers and the public; the Editor and the printer’s-devil are merely
the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There is a secret
consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the Literary
Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than use;
and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does
himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others from
doing their best. The ‘dog-in-the-manger’ principle comes into full
play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or
likelihood, it goes in; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to
draw attention, to make a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every
objection is weighed: if grave, it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty.
One way or other, it might be better; and while this nice point is
pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there
is no question about.
The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous apprehension of the
Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of
the contributions on which he has to pass judgment; and the nearer
an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw,
or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair’s-breadth
difference, to its final reception. If people are likely to ask, ‘Who
wrote a certain paper in the last number of ——?’ the Editor is bound,
as a point of honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part
of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are
equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of
more than the allowed average merit, his next care is to spoil by
revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is
any thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the
proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a
paternal regard for the interests of the public, he takes care that their
tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too
high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossible to
continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious
appetite for the piquant and high-seasoned, as we forbid children to
indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had
to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is
no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality of style, to disorder
the nerves or perplex the understanding: the reader may read, and
smile, and sleep, without meeting a single idea to break his repose!
Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first
paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you
alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying ‘a pepper-corn
rent,’ or making one’s bow on entering a room: it is being let off
cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their own: it is like
signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in
the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede the
march of the style; and others are contented and take great pains
(with Lindley Murray’s Grammar lying open before them) to alter ‘if
it is’ into ‘if it be.’ An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your
thoughts into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up
into short paragraphs: if you make frequent breaks, they turn the
tables on you that way, and throw the whole composition into
masses. Any thing to preserve the form and appearance of power, to
make the work their own by mental stratagem, to stamp it by some
fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run
away with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master-spirits
of the work and of the age! If there is any point they do not
understand, they are sure to meddle with it, and mar the sense; for it
piques their self-love, and they think they are bound ex-officio to
know better than the writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and
merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when
perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and produces a
cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have taken to
compare the context and vary the phraseology.
Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of their
contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the right
from a single supercilious glance,—and you in the wrong, after
poring over a subject for a month. There are Editors who, if you
insert the name of a popular actor or artist, strike it out, and, in
virtue of their authority, insert a favourite of their own,—as a
dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some
Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blame nobody.
The first excites their jealousy of contemporary merit; the last excites
their fears, and they do not like to make enemies. Some insist upon
giving no opinion at all, and observe an unarmed neutrality as to all
parties and persons;—it is no wonder the world think very little of
them in return. Some Editors stand upon their characters for this;
others for that. Some pique themselves upon being genteel and well-
dressed; others on being moral and immaculate, and do not perceive
that the public never trouble their heads about the matter. We only
know one Editor who openly discards all regard to character and
decency, and who thrives by the dissolution of partnership, if indeed
the articles were ever drawn up. We shall not mention names, as we
would not advertise a work that ‘ought to lie on no gentleman’s
table.’ Some Editors drink tea with a set of blue stockings and
literary ladies: not a whisper, not a breath that might blow away
those fine cobwebs of the brain—
‘More subtle web Arachne cannot spin;
Nor those fine threads which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee!’
Others dine with Lords and Academicians—for God’s sake, take care
what you say! Would you strip the Editor’s mantel-piece of the cards
of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months?
An Editor takes a turn in St. James’s-street, and is congratulated by
the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write;
and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed.
We have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading
journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own
paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without
adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very
good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ‘he would
never have another man of talents for an Editor’ (the Editor, in this
case, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ‘for he was tired
of having their good things thrust in his teeth.’ Some Editors are
scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs: others are bullies or quacks:
others are nothing at all—they have the name, and receive a salary
for it! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable.
At Lord’s-Ground there are some old hands that are famous for
‘blocking out and staying in:’ it would seem that some of our literary
veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow
or Eton.
All this is bad enough; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their
own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of
them. These self-styled friends are the night-shade and hemlock
clinging to the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and
dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a
cordon, an opake mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they
are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get
between him and the public, and shut out the light, and set aside
common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some
established organ of opinion, while all they want is to make it the
organ of their dogmas, prejudices, or party. They want to be the
Magazine or the Review—to wield that power covertly, to warp that
influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not
if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every question—fly-blow every
writer who is not of their own set. A friend of theirs has three articles
in the last number of ——; they strain every nerve and make pressing
instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by another hand,
in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short
articles which are read by the vulgar, are cut down to make room for
the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their
friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the
party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion,
when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness
displayed. They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal
into a dull pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on
certain heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in
proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot do by an
appeal to argument or sound policy, they effect by importunity and
insinuation. They keep the Editor in continual alarm as to what will
be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in
nine cases out of ten) just what he tells them.
These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have
no friends—his only prompter should be the number of copies of the
work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a
work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel.
Principle and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate,
inviolable: the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be
prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another difficulty lies here.
An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man—a
distinguished character; otherwise, he cannot lend his name and
sanction to the work. The conductor of a periodical publication
which is to circulate widely and give the tone to taste and opinion,
ought to be of high standing, should have connections with society,
should belong to some literary institution, should be courted by the
great, be run after by the obscure. But ‘here’s the rub’—that one so
graced and gifted can neither have his time nor his thoughts to
himself. Our obligations are mutual; and those who owe much to
others, become the slaves of their good opinion and good word. He
who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in politeness;
he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated
to the son of the Muses:—can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A
tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron:—the severe
rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of
private life. On the contrary, Mr. —— is a garretteer—a person that
nobody knows; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend
it; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An
Editor, then, should be an abstraction—a being in the clouds—a mind
without a body—reason without passion.——But where find such a
one?
THE LETTER-BELL
The Monthly Magazine.]

[March, 1831.
Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of

human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a
world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye
of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of
insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the
brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be
compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ which, if analysed,
breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the
value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the
account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them
apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in
it! As I write this, the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant
sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate
clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten
years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me
from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into
life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was
strange, uncertain, adverse—a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of
shifting objects—and when this sound alone, startling me with the
recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left,
brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still
connecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to
persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then),
the long line of blue hills near the place where I was brought up
waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-
oaks rustle their red leaves in the eveningbreeze, and the road from
—— to ——, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares
me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary
and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. I should
notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution circled my
head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I
walked comfortable and cheerful by its side—
‘And by the vision splendid
Was on my way attended.’
It rose then in the east: it has again risen in the west. Two suns in
one day, two triumphs of liberty in one age, is a miracle which I hope
the Laureate will hail in appropriate verse. Or may not Mr.
Wordsworth give a different turn to the fine passage, beginning—
‘What, though the radiance which was once so bright,
Be now for ever vanished from my sight;
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?’
For is it not brought back, ‘like morn risen on mid-night‘; and may
he not yet greet the yellow light shining on the evening bank with
eyes of youth, of genius, and freedom, as of yore? No, never! But
what would not these persons give for the unbroken integrity of their
early opinions—for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain—one Io
pæan to Liberty—one burst of indignation against tyrants and
sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and
prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge
serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and
poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned should be
written the word Recreant! Every taunt, every reproach, every note
of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recal to them how
their hearts failed them in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And
what shall we say to him—the sleep-walker, the dreamer, the sophist,
the word-hunter, the craver after sympathy, but still vulnerable to
truth, accessible to opinion, because not sordid or mechanical? The
Bourbons being no longer tied about his neck, he may perhaps
recover his original liberty of speculating; so that we may apply to
him the lines about his own Ancient Mariner—
‘And from his neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.’
This is the reason I can write an article on the Letter-Bell, and other
such subjects; I have never given the lie to my own soul. If I have felt
any impression once, I feel it more strongly a second time; and I have
no wish to revile or discard my best thoughts. There is at least a
thorough keeping in what I write—not a line that betrays a principle
or disguises a feeling. If my wealth is small, it all goes to enrich the
same heap; and trifles in this way accumulate to a tolerable sum. Or
if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes
me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not how long ago. It
was a kind of alarm to break off from my work when there happened
to be company to dinner or when I was going to the play. That was
going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been
more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one
else in the house was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and
conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D
——, a maiden lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been
married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by talking all
day of going to see Mrs. Siddons’ ‘airs and graces’ at night in some
favourite part; and when the Letter-Bell announced that the time was
approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was
lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her
companion should not be in time to get good places—lest the curtain
should draw up before they arrived—and lest I should lose one line
or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next
morning! The punctuating of time at that early period—every thing
that gives it an articulate voice—seems of the utmost consequence;
for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of
them: a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can
hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in
embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing events. How
often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late! How often had
to run after the postman with it—now missing, now recovering the
sound of his bell—breathless, angry with myself—then hearing the
welcome sound come full round a corner—and seeing the scarlet
costume which set all my fears and self-reproaches at rest! I do not
recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or
wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I
have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been
always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like
the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a
hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on
second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-
chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other
times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little back
painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over
the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen,
placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire;
while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to
the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in
it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now—
‘The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.’
There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage

beside it:—how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous,
undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a
lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting
gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the
dandy-school of morals or sentiment)—
‘While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.’
Perhaps there is no part of a painter’s life (if we must tell ‘the secrets
of the prison-house’) in which he has more enjoyment of himself and
his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive,
sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his
brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets
a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more
ostensible sources of satisfaction—greater splendour, wealth, or
fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such
a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest
drudgery to others—too humble to despise aught that had to do with
the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his
projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ‘Entire affection
scorneth nicer hands.’ When the professor is above this mechanical
part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other
worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of
his inmost thoughts—
‘His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!’
I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while

the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the
fraternal board, where youth and hope
‘Made good digestion wait on appetite
And health on both—’
or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and
with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the
thoughts of my next day’s labours.
The dustman’s bell, with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the
brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but
not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost licence of
inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the
imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an
ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his
grounds: the professor declared ‘he would as soon think of
encouraging a froggery.’ This was barbarous as it was senseless.
Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch novels and
Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment!
The postman’s double knock at the door the next morning is ‘more
germain to the matter.’ How that knock often goes to the heart! We
distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General
Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing
news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed,
fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the sound of what is to be
paid—eight-pence, nine-pence, a shilling—and our hopes generally
rise with the postage. How we are provoked at the delay in getting
change—at the servant who does not hear the door! Then if the
postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang
is there! It is like the silence of death—of hope! We think he does it
on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense. I have
sometimes walked out to see the Mail-Coach pass, by which I had
sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. I never see a Mail-
Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the bearer of glad tidings—
the messenger of fate. I have reason to say so. The finest sight in the
metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The
horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious
of the precious burden they convey. There is a peculiar secresy and
despatch, significant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings
concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and
supercilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In
fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer’s
heat or winter’s cold, since they are borne on through the air in a
winged chariot. The Mail-Carts drive up; the transfer of packages is
made; and, at a signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable
scrolls that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts for
ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a
line after they are gone! Some persons think the sublimest object in
nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean: but give me, for
my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly
of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them
to the Land’s-End!
In Cowper’s time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up; but he has
beautifully described the coming in of the Post-Boy:—
‘Hark! ’tis the twanging horn o’er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright:—
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-packed load behind.
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
And having dropped the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch!
Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears that trickled down the writer’s cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.’
And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem
like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper
was a poet!—The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy;
but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The
picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and
mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the
intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours,
are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking and appalling
than the beacon-fires (mentioned by Æschylus), which, lighted from
hill-top to hill-top, announced the taking of Troy, and the return of
Agamemnon.
ON THE SPIRIT OF MONARCHY
The Liberal.]
[1822.
‘Strip it of its externals, and what is it but a jest?’
Charade on the word Majesty.
‘As for politics, I think poets are Tories by nature, supposing them to be by
nature poets. The love of an individual person or family, that has worn a crown for
many successions, is an inclination greatly adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the
other hand, mathematicians, abstract reasoners, of no manner of attachment to
persons, at least to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideas of
virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally Whigs. It happens agreeably enough to
this maxim, that the Whigs are friends to that wise, plodding, unpoetical people,
the Dutch.’—Skenstone’s Letters, 1746.
The Spirit of Monarchy then is nothing but the craving in the

human mind after the Sensible and the One. It is not so much a
matter of state-necessity or policy, as a natural infirmity, a disease, a
false appetite in the popular feeling, which must be gratified. Man is
an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires,
which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the
grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he
wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity,
and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a
being no bigger and no better than himself. Each individual would
(were it in his power) be a king, a God: but as he cannot, the next
best thing is to see this reflex image of his self-love, the darling
passion of his breast, realized, embodied out of himself in the first
object he can lay his hands on for the purpose. The slave admires the
tyrant, because the last is, what the first would be. He surveys
himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling, bloated self-
importance of the one is the very counterpart and ultimate goal of
the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same
reason, because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their
inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the
gross intemperance of passion. The worthlessness of the object does
not diminish but irritate the propensity to admire. It serves to
pamper our imagination equally, and does not provoke our envy. All
we want is to aggrandize our own vain-glory at second-hand; and the
less of real superiority or excellence there is in the person we fix
upon as our proxy in this dramatic exhibition, the more easily can we
change places with him, and fancy ourselves as good as he. Nay, the
descent favours the rise; and we heap our tribute of applause the
higher, in proportion as it is a free gift. An idol is not the worse for
being of coarse materials: a king should be a common-place man.
Otherwise, he is superior in his own nature, and not dependent on
our bounty or caprice. Man is a poetical animal, and delights in
fiction. We like to have scope for the exercise of our mere will. We
make kings of men, and Gods of stocks and stones: we are not
jealous of the creatures of our own hands. We only want a peg or
loop to hang our idle fancies on, a puppet to dress up, a lay-figure to
paint from. It is ‘Thing Ferdinand, and not King Ferdinand,’ as it
was wisely and wittily observed. We ask only for the stage effect; we
do not go behind the scenes, or it would go hard with many of our
prejudices! We see the symbols of majesty, we enjoy the pomp, we
crouch before the power, we walk in the procession, and make part of
the pageant, and we say in our secret hearts, there is nothing but
accident that prevents us from being at the head of it. There is
something in the mock-sublimity of thrones, wonderfully congenial
to the human mind. Every man feels that he could sit there; every
man feels that he could look big there; every man feels that he could
bow there; every man feels that he could play the monarch there. The
transition is so easy, and so delightful! The imagination keeps pace
with royal state,
‘And by the vision splendid
Is on its way attended.’
The Madman in Hogarth who fancies himself a king, is not a solitary

instance of this species of hallucination. Almost every true and loyal
subject holds such a barren sceptre in his hand; and the meanest of

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Hydrocarbon Citizens: How Oil

Transformed People and Politics in the

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

By N. M. Ráshed (translated from the Urdu by M. A. R. Habib)

For one black mole the towns of Buqara and Samarqand!

But when dawn breaks

Place your hand in mine!

Appendix: Survey Details and Methodology  191

What makes oil so valuable and transformative on some levels yet so

What is at stake in achieving a better understanding of the attitudes of

autocracies as it financed increased subsidies and helped to make credible

states—​they are far from an unvariegated mass that marches lock-​step in

What Lies Ahead

micro-​level effects of an oil-​based economy to its well-​studied macro-​level

of managing the economy, (2) is effective at job creation, (3) is effective at

This chapter begins with an overview of what scholars currently know

Understanding Rentier States

power.”20 The role of history, institutional development, social conflict, elite

political interests that are fundamentally in opposition to each other—​but

The Rentier Mentality

If the rentier mentality argument is applied to businesses in rentier states,

If the rentier mentality argument is applied to the average citizen in ren-

makes men temperate by necessity, and by consequence careful, vigilant, and

The Unpredictability of Oil

This book argues that the unpredictability of an oil-​based economy plays

Respondents Living in High or Respondents Living in Non-Oil

“How would you evaluate the current Very Bad

Historical Legacies of Oil

Another unique feature of the Middle East’s oil-​producing countries is that

generally requires a larger capital investment, more advanced technology,

the government plays a crucial role as an intermediary; the average person

The Influence of Oil Nationalization Movements

speeches, emotion-​laden language was used to rally populations to push

The Monthly Magazine.]

Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is

The Monthly Magazine.]

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of

There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while

The Spirit of Monarchy then is nothing but the craving in the

The Madman in Hogarth who fancies himself a king, is not a solitary

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Appendix: Survey Details and Methodology 191

states—they are far from an unvariegated mass that marches lock-step in

micro-level effects of an oil-based economy to its well-studied macro-level

political interests that are fundamentally in opposition to each other—but

This book argues that the unpredictability of an oil-based economy plays

Another unique feature of the Middle East’s oil-producing countries is that

speeches, emotion-laden language was used to rally populations to push