Oil revenues freed autocratic states from pressures toward democratization

Evidence

Politically, oil revenues strengthened autocratic governments by freeing them from the financial pressures and constraints which, in other countries, induced governments to accept measures of democratization. Economically, oil wealth often produced a lopsided development, and left these countries dangerously exposed to such outside factors as the fluctuations in the world price of oil, and even, in the long run, to the uncertainties of oil itself. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1157

Categorization

• XREF: A crisp statement of the rentier-state mechanism — connects to comparative politics literature and to the reader’s governance/political-economy threads running through prior curations.