Ahmadov, Anar
(2011)
A conditional theory of the ‘political resource curse:’
oil, autocrats, and strategic contexts.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
A burgeoning literature argues that the abundance of oil in developing countries
strengthens autocratic rule and erodes democracy. However, extant studies either show
the average cross-national correlation between oil and political regime or develop
particularistic accounts that do not easily lend themselves to theorizing. Consequently,
we know little of the causal mechanisms that potentially link oil wealth to undemocratic
outcomes and the conditions that would help explain the ultimate, not average, effect of
oil on political regime.
This study develops a conditional theory of the “political resource curse.” It does
so by undertaking a statistical reassessment of the relationship between oil wealth and
political regime and a nuanced qualitative examination of a set of carefully selected
cases in order to contribute to developing an adequate account of causal mechanisms
that transmit and conditions that shape the relationship between oil abundance and
autocracy. It draws on qualitative and quantitative evidence collected over eighteen
months of fieldwork in oil-rich former Soviet countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and
Turkmenistan, and the ‘counterfactual’ oil-poor Kyrgyzstan. Employing a theoretical
framework that draws on insights from the rentier state theory, historical
institutionalism, and rational choice institutionalism, I trace, compare, and contrast the
processes that potentially link oil wealth to regime outcomes in these countries between
1989 and 2010.
The findings strongly suggest that political regime differences can be better
explained by the interaction of oil wealth with several structural and institutional
variables rather than by oil abundance or another single factor alone. A thorough
qualitative analysis of the post-Soviet cases shows that the causal mechanisms
hypothesized in the ‘resource curse’ literature were neither necessarily present, nor
uniform across these cases and throughout the post-Soviet period. This was because a
particular interaction of exogenous variables and oil wealth affected the causal
mechanisms differently, ultimately entailing different regime outcomes. The spread of
alternative political elites, relative size of the ethnic minority with ties to a powerful kin
state, and oil production geography were key exogenous factors that consistently
interacted with oil in affecting the political regimes.
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