Petroleum, Politics and the Struggle for the State: The Case of Iraq
Creators: name: Moore, John
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2024

description: While rentierism, tactical politics and coercion can come together to strengthen a regime, that is not necessarily a given. In the Iraq case, rentierism and effects from tactical political decision-making led to an increased reliance on coercion as the primary means through which ruling regimes maintained power. The state's brittleness created by these dynamics was understood by a segment of thinkers prior to the 2003 US-led invasion but was laid bare to all in the invasion's aftermath. The erosion of the state's coercive capacity following 2003 shows that even with access to significant rents derived from hydrocarbons as well as international aid, successive regimes were and remain under challenge. With the lessons following the 2003 watershed serving as a cautionary tale, it is imperative that both policymakers and academia strive to glean greater insight into the reasons why states form, collapse or are reshaped. Drawing upon an array of literature as well as the author's experience working on and living in Iraq, this thesis uses concepts developed in rentier state theory (RST) to frame the nature of the Iraqi economy both before and after the 2003 invasion. It then draws on Joel Migdal's work on the "Politics of Survival" as well as Antonio Giustozzi's writings on the role of coercion in state formation and state maintenance to assess how coercion and political behaviours interacted with the economy to affect state cohesion from Iraq's inception as a modern territorial-state through the eve of invasion in 2003, and then throughout the 2003 - 2014 period. The specific question posed by this thesis is how have resource dependency, elite strategies to gain or maintain control, and the role of coercion shaped state cohesion? Analyses look at how the effects of and interplay between these three factors have shifted over time, and what role they played in weakening the state's capacity to effect consolidation. Addressing the question of this tripartite relationship provides insight as to whether Iraq can move beyond its multiple civil conflicts towards a stability that enables consolidation, or results in a reformation, to include potential fragmentation, of the state. There is a broad academic interest into the persistence of authoritarianism in different country contexts along with the effects of international intervention. As such, the contribution of this thesis is its integration of different theories to allow for a richer discussion regarding how elite competition and international intervention can impact state development. Specific hypotheses tested are that political decision-making is the central determinant in achieving and then maintaining state cohesion. In addition, the thesis demonstrates that international interventions in highly complex, conflict prone, and resource rich contexts - absent the will to suffer the political, economic, and ethical costs of nation-building - tend to catalyse and perpetuate instability and erode the potential for the emergence of a viable nation-state. Chapter One introduces the thesis, with Chapter Two detailing the different theories used. Chapters Three through Five use the different theories to interrogate the nature of Iraq's economy, politics, and use of state coercion over time with Chapter Six providing a concluding analysis.