How exactly does Thomas Friedman’s “law” of petropolitics affect the behavior of petrolist states and their citizens in real terms? Friedman offers four “effects” to explain how the law functions on the ground.

The Taxation Effect

Because petrolist governments are so flush with oil wealth, they do not need to levy high taxes against their citizens. This is good for the pocketbooks of many people, but it means that the population as a whole feels like it has less of a stake in the government. It also means that the government does not feel beholden to the wishes of its people because it is essentially self-sustaining. In Friedman’s words:

Oil-rich governments tend to use their revenues to ‘relieve social pressures that might otherwise lead to demands for greater accountability’ from, or representation in, the governing authority.…Oil-backed regimes that do not have to tax their people in order to survive, because they can simply drill an oil well, also do not have to listen to their people or represent their wishes.¹

The Spending Effect

Closely related to the taxation effect is the spending effect. In general, citizens are unlikely to take an active role in the political life of their country when they are not financially invested in the state or politically empowered to participate in civic life. They are even less likely to be critical of their government when lavish welfare programs satisfy most of their material needs. Revenues from energy sales can often lead to “greater patronage spending, which in turn dampens pressures for democratization.”²

The Group Repression Effect

In addition to spending large amounts of money lulling peo\ple into a comfortable submission with welfare programs, petrolist governments can also take a more sinister approach by actively repressing the development of civil society. Oil money gives the state the freedom to “spend excessively on police, internal security, and intelligence forces that can be used to choke democratic movements.”³ Civil society is fragile enough in most petrol states. This kind of government activity can prevent a real civil society from ever developing or challenging the state’s power.

The Modernization Effect

Finally, vast energy revenues can have a direct impact on the incentives that citizens themselves face in making decisions about their lives. In a state with only one dominant industry, there is little incentive to pursue a career in other fields. That is, there is a decrease in “social pressures for occupational specialization, urbanization, and the securing of higher levels of education—trends that normally accompany broader economic development” and the development of a civil society. This lack of diversity impoverishes a society in ways that are not purely political and economic but also cultural. Such societies have great difficulty modernizing and find themselves at odds with many advanced nations around the world. This phenomenon is partially responsible for some of the grave security threats faced by the international community as a whole in the twenty-first century.⁴ Therefore, it is of paramount concern to all policymakers and global citizens, even those outside the energy sector.

1 Friedman, “First Law of Petropolitics”

2 ibid.

3 ibid.

4 ibid.

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