Foreign agents? Natural resources & the political economy of civil society

Corinna Breyel and Theocharis Grigoriadis

No 2016/18, Discussion Papers from Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics

Abstract: Resource-rich dictatorships are more inclined to repress civil society than others. In this paper, we identify a tradeoff between political rents from natural resources and the organizational density of civil society. This organizational density determines the extent to which citizens can threaten the dictator with a revolution. We find that, in the occurrence of a negative oil price shock, regime change becomes likely, whereas a positive oil shock increases the extractive capacity of the dictator. When a negative oil price shock occurs, the persecution of failed revolutionaries can prevent revolution if the probability of revolutionary success is already low ex-ante. Historical and contemporary illustrations are drawn from Iran, the Soviet Union/Russia and Egypt.

Keywords: natural resources; dictatorship; civil society; organizational density; persecution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 P36 P48 P51 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cwa, nep-ene and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:201618

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