Seven Rules of Petroleum Foreign Policy

This article tries to identify and introduce some of the main rules of foreign policy in oil exporting countries. It is a long time that scholars of oil and politics have argued that huge oil revenues in oil exporting countries have considerable effects on political and social life of these countries as we can claim there are a different set of rules in politics of oil rich countries in comparison with non-oil rich countries. This article studies foreign policy in the main oil exporting countries and uses agent-structure model for analyzing effects of oil rents. The article shows that as main agents of foreign policy in their countries, oil exporting governments are shaped by oil revenues on the one hand and behave in an oil-shaped special structure in international arena (world oil market) on the other. The article uses rentier state approach, analytical revisions in these arguments and theories of political economy of oil to show that oil shapes mentioned agent and structure in a particular manner. As a result, the relations between mentioned agent and structure are shaped by oil and in this way a special model of foreign policy is emerged that we can call it “petroleum foreign policy”. The article then identifies main rules of this kind of foreign policy.