| ID | 157848 |
| Title Proper | Cold war geopolitics and the making of the oil curse |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Hendrix, Cullen S |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Does oil hinder democracy? The prevailing wisdom holds that, since 1980, oil has hindered democracy by enabling oil wealth to flow to state-owned oil companies, breaking the fiscal contract with society, and endowing oil-rich regimes with means to invest in repression and accommodation. However, these arguments do not account for system-level factors that might affect the oil-democracy relationship. I argue that a structural break in the oil-democracy relationship occurred at the end of the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union reduced support for both oil-poor and oil-rich authoritarian regimes in the developing world. The rollback of support facilitated post–Cold War democratization of the resource-poor regimes, while oil-rich regimes were better positioned to stave off pressures to democratize. Based on a re-analysis of two prominent studies, I find the oil curse to be a post–Cold War phenomenon, with negative consequences for democracy of a magnitude roughly 80 percent larger than previously estimated. I further explore these dynamics via comparative case studies of Azerbaijan and Georgia. The evidence shows that the oil curse is a function of geopolitical dynamics, not just international market conditions. |
| `In' analytical Note | Journal of Global security Studies Vol. 3, No.1; Jan 2018: p.2–22 |
| Journal Source | Journal of Global security Studies Vol: 3 No 1 |
| Key Words | Geopolitics ; Oil ; Azerbaijan ; Georgia ; Cold War ; Resource Curse, |