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Oil, Polity, and Civil Society: The Construction of a Hegemonic System in Iraq (1945–1958)
Author(s) -
Shuker Zeinab F.,
Abrutyn Seth
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/johs.12250
Subject(s) - polity , hegemony , authoritarianism , civil society , politics , democracy , political economy , spanish civil war , dependency (uml) , sociology , work (physics) , political system , political science , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , systems engineering
Abstract Conventional theories of political economy assume that dependency on natural resources, such as oil, have a negative impact on the development of a democratic political system. While there is a developed body of work that explains the different mechanisms that shape this relationship, one mechanism, the role of the civil society, remains mostly ungrasped. As a result, the aim of this paper is to expand our understanding of the group formation effect, first discussed by Michael Ross (2001), and unpack the mechanisms that underline it, by looking at the relationship between rent from oil production, the civil society, and the rise of authoritarianism in Iraq during the period of 1945–1958. We argue that examining the relationship between these variables will help us understand the past and the current situation in Iraq, and it will improve our knowledge of the political formations and activism in oil‐producing countries in general.