Energy Transitions and Political Transformation: Evidence from the Shale Oil Revolution

Christian J. Baehr

No pc5nz_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: An outstanding question in climate politics is how oil-exporting governments will respond to a global clean energy transition. I argue that persistent oil revenue shortfalls strain social contracts in oil-exporting states, compelling governments to enact targeted governance reforms under tightening fiscal constraints. I exploit the sudden emergence of the U.S. shale oil industry as an exogenous supply shock to examine how oil exporters adjust to sustained revenue declines. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find governments exposed to the shale revolution did not respond through broad political liberalization or public goods retrenchment and instead adopted targeted reforms. Systematic evidence on specific reform uptake and a case study indicate these reforms protected public goods provision and curtailed private capture, consistent with a political survival motive driven by rising mass public threats. The findings point to an asymmetric resource curse, in which oil shortfalls generate political responses distinct from those produced by windfalls.

Date: 2026-02-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/698b5998c61361a730c73027/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:pc5nz_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/pc5nz_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().