In writing my book, I had two principal and two secondary goals. My principal goals related to Algeria itself: first, to explain the country's peculiar trajectory with political stability and, eventually, its descent into violence, followed by its fascinating restabilization; second, to use the Algerian experience to contribute to the “rentier state” literature and show that oil has not been the “curse” that the “resource curse” folks suggest it to be. My secondary goals had to do with enriching and contextualizing the argument I was making about Algeria. I sought to do so in two ways: by offering “some preliminary comparisons” between Algeria's experience and that of other Middle Eastern oil-exporting states at times of economic shocks, and by cautiously extending the argument about variations in stability in Algeria to account for variations in stability in the four other countries. Four of the five empirical chapters of the book are devoted exclusively to Algeria; a single chapter—what I refer to as “a brief excursion into comparative analysis”—is devoted to Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia and the comparison with Algeria.

Many years of study of Algeria have made clear to me that that country's nation- and state-building experience, from the 1920s until the present day, has had much to do with the peculiarities of its leadership: its composition and relationship to the population, its interests and the ways it asserts them, and the decisions it makes. Through the case study method that includes a richly detailed description and structured, focused analysis, with special attention to critical junctures, I elucidate the centrality of leadership in the fashioning of outcomes (and in ways that exemplify what I refer to as the “poverty of politics”). Whatever resources that were available have been instrumentalized by leaders to consolidate their power, pursue their interests, and execute their decisions.

Is leadership an independent variable? If an independent variable is something that influences or causes a change in something else, then of course the decisions of leaders, relative to political stability, is an independent variable. Beyond that, however, it seems to me that leadership is a complex enough phenomenon—made up of a multiplicity of elements, including such things as reputation, competence, charisma, and so on—that it cannot be broken down into discrete parts and operationalized in a way that would satisfy all. For that reason, I chose to highlight, through richly layered description and textured analysis, the decisions of leaders at “foundational moments in the political-economic development of the state,” and how, in fact, those decisions have shaped the Algerian experience and its vagaries with stability.

As for the role of oil in impacting outcomes, it is true that given that all cases discussed in the book are oil producers and exporters, it may be difficult to isolate the resource's importance. However, in my detailed discussion of Algeria—but in the sections on Saudi Arabia as well—I show how the practice of politics, and specifically leadership choice at critical junctures, displayed important similarities both before and after the inception of oil-based development. In other words, within-case comparison—of two distinct time periods—reveals that in my principal case and at least in one of the comparators', oil has made less of a difference than some may expect. In short, when oil rents have been available, they have consolidated what was already in place; by providing additional resources, they serve to “enhance the efficacy of leadership strategies.”

As with other studies that demonstrate resource wealth's “conditional” effect on political outcomes, my research shows, I believe, that “oil … is nothing but a machine à sous (‘cash cow’). It is what leaders do with it—the decisions they make—that count” (p. 185).