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Tragically, dictatorship and civil strife have led to less developed, less democratic, and more conflict-prone contemporary Muslim-majority societies. Ahmed argues, however, neither Islam nor aspects of Muslim culture are the cause. Grounded in a positive political economy approach, Conquests and Rents investigates why these societies are predisposed to political violence and low levels of development. Focusing on the role of political institutions and economic rents, Ahmed argues that territories where Islam spread via military conquest developed institutions and practices impervious to democracy and more prone to civil war, while societies in non-conquered territories developed governance structures more susceptible to democracy when rents decline. Conquests and Rents introduces a novel theoretical argument, with corroborative qualitative and statistical analysis, to examine the interplay of the historical legacy of institutions from the premodern period and contemporary rent streams in Muslim-majority societies.
‘Why are Muslim-majority societies so often plagued by poverty, tyranny, and war? In this remarkable book, Faisal Ahmed offers a fresh answer to this age-old question. Synthesizing large and diverse bodies of scholarship and disparate data sources, he shows how historical legacies and natural endowments together determine the fate of nations. The result is one of the most important works on the political economy of the Muslim world to appear in many years.'
Tarek Masoud - John F. Kennedy School of Government
‘Faisal Ahmed presents us with an excellent overview of how the early Muslim conquests wound up saddling territories with an institutional panoply that would produce long-term stagnation. Full of both theoretical and empirical insight, this is a book that will be of great interest to anyone keen to understand the historical trajectory of the Middle East.'
David Stasavage - author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy
‘Conquests and Rents provides a fresh take on the question of why Muslim societies tend to be less democratic and more prone to violence. Rather than pinning the blame on Islam as a religion or a set of institutions, Ahmed highlights variation in historical development in Muslim-majority countries and the more temporally proximate effects of oil and foreign aid receipts. Based on rigorous analyses, the book makes an important intervention in ongoing debates about historical legacies and the ‘resource curse.''
Melani Cammett - Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University
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