Oil, Domestic Politics, and International Conflict

Abstract

Oil politics is a major force in global and domestic politics, especially in developing countries. Oil income makes oil-producing “petrostates” vulnerable to the resource curse, the symptoms of which include pervasive corruption, wasted public spending, volatile economic growth, and more frequent civil wars and domestic conflict. Yet while common tendencies are observable among the group of petrostates, there are also important and systematic differences among them. States that are petro-revolutionary – having both oil income and a revolutionary leader – tend to instigate conflicts at a rate three and a half times that of a comparable “typical” state (one without oil or a revolutionary leader). Indeed, the tendency of petrostates to get into international conflicts cannot be explained without disaggregating the group. This research thus emphasizes the point that oil does not have a single, monolithic effect, but rather it interacts with domestic politics in a complex way.