Challenging the Consensus on the Oil Curse

Abstract

Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States. By Pauline Jones Luong, Erika Weinthal . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 425 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13 9780521148085). Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal pair up once again, in Oil Is Not a Curse , to examine the Soviet successor states, this time offering an explanation for how states are not cursed by their oil reserves, but rather by the ownership structure of these reserves. Their conceptualization of ownership structure is a set of relations among claimants, following Baldwin (2002) and Zurn (2002). Who owns and controls the mineral sector is the key intervening variable between wealth and the institutional outcome. They posit that weak fiscal regimes are not necessarily endogenous to mineral wealth, but are nonetheless prevalent. Thus, they ask, if weak fiscal regimes are exogenous to mineral wealth, then under what conditions are mineral-rich states that inherit weak fiscal regimes likely to develop strong ones? The authors employ qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including hypotheses of ownership, country case studies based on mass survey and polling data, and the authors' own interviews and surveys, as well as a large-N data set. The book contains several introductory chapters, which serve to explain the overall framework and to justify the focus on fiscal regimes. The book is then divided into two parts, beginning with a theoretical discussion of types of ownership followed by several case study chapters. The final …