Oil and Autocratic Regime Survival

Abstract

This article uncovers a new mechanism linking oil wealth to autocratic regime survival: the investigation tests whether increases in oil wealth improve the survival of autocracies by lowering the chances of democratization, reducing the risk of transition to subsequent dictatorship, or both. Using a new measure of autocratic durability shows that, once models allow for unit effects, oil wealth promotes autocratic survival by lowering the risk of ouster by rival autocratic groups. Evidence also indicates that oil income increases military spending in dictatorships, which suggests that increasing oil wealth may deter coups that could have caused a regime collapse.

Oil and political survival

“…18 Our study complements these studies and suggests a mechanism by which oil may impede democratic transitions-namely by allowing non-democratic leaderships to stay longer in political o¢ ce. The relevance of this mechanism is supported by recent evidence in Wright et al (2012) who, using di¤erent variants of the logit model and a di¤erent de…nition of leadership survival than we do, document that oil wealth positively a¤ects the likelihood that autocratic leaderships remain in power.…”

“…the survival of "authoritarianism" and "democracy") and not on political survival, as in the present study. In a new and complementary study to ours, Wright et al (2012) document a positive e¤ect of oil wealth on autocratic regime survival using a di¤erent methodology (ordinary and conditional logit) and regime duration variable (from Geddes et al 2012) than we do. of up to 152 countries and 617 leadership durations (henceforth LDs).…”

The extractive industries and development: The resource curse at the micro, meso and macro levels

“…There is also evidence suggesting that it is the extent of mineral wealth that matters for democratic accountability rather than any shorter term changes in mineral affluence (e.g. a short-term income windfall induced by price fluctuations; see Haber and Menaldo, 2010;Wacziarg, 2012;Wright et al, 2015 andRoss, 2015).…”

Taxation, Non-Tax Revenue and Democracy: New Evidence Using New Cross-Country Data

“…Most research has reported a negative relationship between natural resource production and democracy (Andersen and Ross 2014;Aslaksen 2010;Ross 2001). However, a handful of studies have questioned the robustness of these findings (Haber and Menaldo 2011;Alexeev and Conrad 2009;Dunning 2008;Herb 2005), while several studies have focused instead on the impact of resource wealth on regime durability rather than levels of democracy per se (Smith 2004;Morrison 2009;Wright et al 2013). …”