56FROM ENERGY POVERTY TO ENERGY EXTREMISMSultan Qaboos, Sheikh Zayed quickly embarked upon building a mod-
ern state, shifting development into high gear and cementing his family
in power. Abu Dhabi was finally connected to the mainland in 1967 and
electrified in 1968, a few years before Oman but seven years after Dubai.^13
While Abu Dhabi and Oman were extreme examples, development
came extraordinarily quickly in each of the Gulf monarchies. Oil wealth,
especially after 1973, provided traditional sheikhdoms with the capital
to modernize into independent nation- states that could survive in a
conflict- ridden part of the world. But what about traditional rule? Mod-
ernization theorists had predicted that wealth and development would
drive the sheikhs out. Iran seemed to conform to the theory when it suc-
cumbed to revolution in 1979. But events didn’t quite match the politi-
cal scientists’ playbook. As predicted, the absolute monarch— Shah Reza
Pahlavi— was overthrown, and his former subjects did achieve a greater
role in governance. But the shah wasn’t replaced by a modernizing gov-
ernment. The new regime, led by a Shiite cleric, was a conservative the-
ocracy that actually reversed aspects of the “Westernized” development
pursued by the shah.
The predictive power of modernization theory was even less impres-
sive in the case of Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf monarchies.
Rather than collapse, the Gulf ruling families used their expropriation
of the global oil business to fortify control. With the possible exception
of Kuwait, these countries became more autocratic as they developed,
not less.
The crucial factor that modernization theory seemed to miss was
that states had an alternative path for mainlining (and maintaining)
power. With so much money coming in, sheikhs could simply buy citi-
zens’ support. And this, in the Gulf, was exactly what happened. Tribal
sheikhs reinvigorated their tried- and- true patronage institutions with
the proceeds of their oil revolutions. They held onto power not through
repression or by blocking modernization— as theory predicted— but by
spending oil rents to transform thoroughly and improve the lives of
their subjects.