Ecological Orientalism in the Economist

"The importance of desert geography is another explanation for Arab autocracy. In a 2010 paper Stephen Haber of Stanford University and Victor Menaldo of the University of Washington argue that desert institutions inhibit democracy. Moderate rainfall breeds settled agriculture, they reckon, fostering urbanisation, trade and state-building. Arid land undermined the development of the modern state, a necessary if not sufficient condition for democratisation.  There is a close relationship between desert terrain and conquest: camel-borne Arab armies were well-equipped to travel and fight over desert. But Mr Chaney reckons that the legacy of conquest is more important than rainfall. There is no statistically significant relationship between aridity and autocracy outside the conquered world. Mr Chaney does identify some conquered countries with rainfall levels similar to those of unconquered Muslim states. Within this overlapping sample, the conquest states again align with the democratic deficit. Iran is autocratic; Mongolia, with a similar level of rainfall, is not." (thanks "Ibn Rushd")