The politics of governing oil effectively: A comparative study of two new oil-rich states in Africa

Sam Hickey, Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, Angelo Izama and Giles Mohan

Global Development Institute Working Paper Series from GDI, The University of Manchester

Abstract: The challenges facing developing countries with new-found natural resource wealth are generally understood in terms of whether they have the institutions of ‘good governance’ required to avoid the resource curse. New insights from a political settlements perspective show how deeper forms of politics and power relations play a more significant role than such institutions, and help explain some counter-intuitive findings regarding how ‘semi-authoritarian’ Uganda seems to be governing oil somewhat more in line with its national interest as compared to ‘democratic’ Ghana. We find that bureaucratic ‘pockets of effectiveness’ play a critical role, with outcomes shaped by the nature of their embedded autonomy vis-à-vis different kinds of ruling coalition. Efforts to promote ‘best-practice’ governance reforms in such contexts might be misplaced, and could be replaced with a stronger focus on building specific forms of state capacity and a greater acceptance that ‘developmental collusion’ between political and bureaucratic actors may offer more appropriate or ‘best-fit’ solutions.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.effective-states.org/wp-content/uploads ... ulai_izama_mohan.pdf (application/pdf)

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:bwp:bwppap:esid-054-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Global Development Institute Working Paper Series from GDI, The University of Manchester Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rowena Harding ().