Michael Herb’s ‎research interests focus on issues related to the Arab monarchies of the Gulf. He has written on the political consequences of oil wealth, on the relationship between taxation and democracy, and on how ‎monarchism shapes the process of democratization. He maintains the Kuwait Politics Database, the most comprehensive and authoritative source of information on Kuwaiti elections. He is the author of The Wages of Oil: Parliaments ‎and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE (Cornell University Press, 2014) and All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (State University of New York Press, 1999).