Tragically, dictatorship and civil strife are prevalent in many contemporary Muslim-majority (hereon, Muslim) societies. In Conquests and Rents: A Political Economy of Dictatorship and Violence in Muslim Societies, I offer an original explanation for why. The book is grounded in a positive political economy approach that presents a formal theory that is “tested” in a historical and contemporary setting. The empirics are attentive to casual identification and employ mixed methods (e.g., case studies, survey data).
Conquests and Rents argues that contemporary Muslim societies tend to be less developed, less democratic, and more conflict prone on average. However, there is considerable variation within the Muslim world depending on how Islam was spread. Territories where Islam spread via military conquest developed institutions and practices that led to political regimes that made them more impervious to democracy, and in response to decline in rents, more prone to civil war. In contrast, societies in non-conquered territories – including some Muslim societies, such as Indonesia and Malaysia – developed governance structures that made them more susceptible to economic and political (democratic) development; and where declines in rents provided opportunities for transitions to democracy.
A central takeway from the book is that neither Islam nor aspects of Muslim culture are the root causes of dictatorship and civil strife in many contemporary Muslim societies. Rather, it is due to the interplay of two factors: (1) the path dependent political effects (e.g., institutions, governing coalitions) attributable to societies that experienced Muslim conquest and (2) increases and decreases in various types of foreign rent streams (e.g., revenues from oil exports, foreign aid, geopolitical assistance) in those societies. By linking these two factors – conquest and rents – to patterns of civil war, dictatorship (and democracy), the book’s theory and empirics contribute to rich literatures in instititutional economics, historical legacies, international political economy, and the resource curse. The book’s topic and approach should appeal to scholars in political economy, comparative and international politics, as well as policymakers interested in understanding why many Muslim societies are economically and politically underdeveloped.
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Faisal Z Ahmed 