Colonial Oil and State-Making: The Separate Independence of Qatar and Bahrain

Abstract

The "resource curse" has received considerable scholarly attention over the past few decades. Departing from the original argument that oil hinders democracy, comparative political scientists have presented varying claims regarding the impact of oil on political regimes. Some have denied the thesis altogether, maintaining that the correlation is a result of omitted variable bias, while others have offered a more nuanced view that the presence or absence of the curse depends on a third factor.