But seriously: does oil really hinder democracy?

Abstract

Abstract: Recent studies have disputed the claim that ‘oil hinders democracy, ’ or raised questions about the causal mechanisms behind it. I re-examine the question of petroleum wealth and regime type, using pooled logit regressions, an improved measure of petroleum wealth, and a dataset that covers up to 170 countries from 1960 to 2002. I also explore other types of evidence on oil and authoritarian rule, including data on public opinion, gasoline prices, and the survival of government leaders. The results suggest a) oil wealth strongly inhibits democratic transitions in authoritarian states; b) oil has no overall affect on the survival of democracies, but may weakly encourage democratic breakdown in low-income states; c) once oil’s role is properly accounted for, Islam seems to have no effect on regime type; d) oil wealth lengthens the tenure of authoritarian rulers, although this result is somewhat fragile; e) there is little support for two of the three causal mechanisms suggested by Ross [2001], although careful testing is hampered by poor data; f) alternative causal mechanisms suggested by Boix [2003], Smith [2007], and Morrison [forthcoming], are unpersuasive. In a 2001 article, I argued that “oil hinders democracy, ” and suggested three causal mechanisms to explain this pattern. Although this article was not the first to make this argument, it helped touch off a debate over the link between natural resource wealth and regime types. Some studies supported the central finding that oil inhibits democratization

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