Status transmission theory argues that leading educational institutions prepare individuals from privileged backgrounds for positions of prestige and power in their societies. We examine the educational backgrounds of more than 2,900 members of the U.S. cultural elite and compare these backgrounds to a sample of nearly 4,000 business and political leaders. We find that the leading U.S. educational institutions are substantially more important for preparing future members of the cultural elite than they are for preparing future members of the business or political elite. In addition, members of the cultural elite who are recognized for outstanding achievements by peers and experts are much more likely to have obtained degrees from the leading educational institutions than are those who achieve acclaim from popular audiences. By focusing on the extent to which industries and cultural domains depend on quickness and facility in the absorption and manipulation of complex and sophisticated symbolic media, our analysis leads to an important specification of the role of highly selective colleges and universities in elite formation.

Conventional theories of political economy assume that dependency on natural resources, such as oil, have a negative impact on the development of a democratic political system. While there is a developed body of work that explains the different mechanisms that shape this relationship, one mechanism, the role of the civil society, remains mostly ungrasped. As a result, the aim of this paper is to expand our understanding of the group formation effect, first discussed by Michael Ross (2001), and unpack the mechanisms that underline it, by looking at the relationship between rent from oil production, the civil society, and the rise of authoritarianism in Iraq during the period of 1945–1958. We argue that examining the relationship between these variables will help us understand the past and the current situation in Iraq, and it will improve our knowledge of the political formations and activism in oil‐producing countries in general.

Primogeniture literally means “first born,” but is nearly always linked to the legal or customary right of inheritance of property (land), titles, and/or offices by the first‐born son. The system appears nearly as old as heritable property, when lineage and descent becomes a real or fictive determinant of the maintenance of “family” property. Primogeniture reaches its zenith in agrarian or feudal societies and, typically speaking, is less and less important in urban societies; as has been the case in many European states, it may become legally prohibited.

Place of residence rules can take on multiple meanings, linked to either kinship‐based patterns of residence or legal and survey definitions of residence used to measure families and living arrangements. Kinship‐based patterns are associated with the cultural, economic, and social conditions of a given group. These rules of residence delineate where family units, namely husband–wife, physically reside. Worldwide, the most common place of residence is patrilocal (virilocal) residence, where kinship networks are formed as a part of patrilineal descent groups. Along with descent rules, place of residence rules contribute to group identities; political, trade, and economic alliances; and the maintenance and passing down of property and land (Lee 1979). In western countries residence rules are used with legal implications, such as the collection of census data in the United States.