Resource Curse or Rentier Peace? The Ambiguous Effects of Oil Wealth and Oil Dependence on Violent Conflict

Matthias Basedau and Jann Lay
Additional contact information
Matthias Basedau: German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Basedau@giga-hamburg.de

Journal of Peace Research, 2009, vol. 46, issue 6, 757-776

Abstract: The ‘resource curse’ hypothesis claims that abundance in natural resources, particularly oil, encourages especially civil war. Natural resources provide both motive and opportunity for conflict and create indirect institutional and economic causes of instability. Contrarily, the theory of the rentier state — largely neglected in the study of peace and war in this respect — suggests that regimes use revenue from abundant resources to buy off peace through patronage, large-scale distributive policies and effective repression. Consequently, such rentier states would tend to be more stable politically and less prone to conflict. These two theories thus imply ambivalent effects of resource abundance on conflict proneness. This article presents part of a solution to this apparent puzzle for the case of oil-producing countries. The key argument is that both resource wealth per capita and resource dependence need to be taken into account, since only the availability of very high per capita revenues from oil allows governments to achieve internal stability. The empirical analysis supports this hypothesis. The findings of multivariate cross-country regressions indicate a U-shaped relationship between oil dependence and civil war onset, while high resource wealth per capita tends to be associated with less violence. The results of a macro-qualitative comparison for a reduced sample of highly dependent oil exporters are even more clearcut. Using the same reduced sample, we find that oil-wealthy countries apparently manage to maintain political stability by a combination of large-scale distribution, high spending on the security apparatus and protection by outsiders. Compared to oil-poor countries and in contradiction to the rentier state theory, the institutions of oil-wealthy countries do not seem to be particularly characterized by patronage and clientelism.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (95)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/46/6/757.abstract (text/html)

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:sae:joupea:v:46:y:2009:i:6:p:757-776

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().