Oil Is Not a Curse
Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States

This book argues that these outcomes are linked to the ownership structure that petroleum-rich states choose to manage their wealth.

Pauline Jones Luong (Author), Erika Weinthal (Author)

9780521765770, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 August 2010

446 pages, 16 b/w illus. 5 maps 24 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.74 kg

'The author's concluding chapter makes a reasonably, if not overwhelmingly persuasive case about why the resource curse hypothesis is a myth.' Gaurav Sharma, oilholicssynonymous.com

This book makes two central claims: first, that mineral-rich states are cursed not by their wealth but, rather, by the ownership structure they choose to manage their mineral wealth and second, that weak institutions are not inevitable in mineral-rich states. Each represents a significant departure from the conventional resource curse literature, which has treated ownership structure as a constant across time and space and has presumed that mineral-rich countries are incapable of either building or sustaining strong institutions - particularly fiscal regimes. The experience of the five petroleum-rich Soviet successor states (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) provides a clear challenge to both of these assumptions. Their respective developmental trajectories since independence demonstrate not only that ownership structure can vary even across countries that share the same institutional legacy but also that this variation helps to explain the divergence in their subsequent fiscal regimes.

1. Rethinking the resource curse: ownership structure and institutions in mineral rich states
2. Fiscal regimes: taxation and expenditure in mineral rich states
3. State ownership with control versus private domestic ownership
4. Two version of rentierism: state ownership with control in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
5. Petroleum rents without rentierism: domestic private ownership in the Russian Federation
6. State ownership without control versus private foreign ownership
7. Eluding the obsolescing bargain: state ownership without control in Azerbaijan
8. Revisiting the obsolescing bargain: foreign private ownership in Kazakhstan
9. Taking domestic politics seriously: explaining ownership structure over mineral resources
10. The myth of the resource curse.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]