Reader’s Guide: Crude Democracy
By Roy Licklider | June 2009
The central argument of the book is that resource revenues (including but not limited to oil) can support as well as undermine democracy. This, of course, runs directly contrary to the current accepted wisdom of the resource curse, that countries with substantial resources can generate sufficient rents to function as states, often including substantial payoffs to well-connected individuals, without having to get their populations to agree to pay taxes to support them; such efforts would presumably have involved some sort of accountability to the population, leading to democracy.
From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series
Keywords: Botswana • Reader's Guide to Crude Democracy
