Ross, Michael Lewin. "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics, Vol.53, No.3 (2001): 325-361.

Ross, Michael Lewin. "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics, Vol.53, No.3 (2001): 325-361.

• Generally, as countries get wealthier, they also become more democratic. This rule does not apply if that increased income is the result of oil. This theory is commonly used to explain the lack of democracy in the Middle East, as well as in Venezuela, Central Asia, and many parts of Africa (325).
• The author challenges this claim in the Middle East, after all there are many other factors that could effect democratization in the Middle East (326).
• Modernization theory predicts that countries will democratize as their population becomes more well educated and more economically developed, particularly by shifting from agriculture to administrative work and specialized labor. Oil wealth is seen as throwing a wrench in modernization theory because it creates rising wealth without the accompanying social conditions thought to cause democracy (336-337).
• The term 'rentier state' originated in the early 20th Century to describe the behavior of European states that lived off the interest from loans extended to non-European governments. Its meaning was later refined by Hussein Mahdavy as any country that received substantial rents, and Hazem Beblawi used it to specifically refer to countries that received much of their income from rents from foreigners (329).
• Many countries in the Middle East are designated as 'rentier states' because so much of their revenue is derived from oil. Oil sales account for over half of state revenue in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, UAE, and Libya, and oil sales, remittances, and transit fees account for significant portions of revenue in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (329).
• It is argued that oil-rich regions tend to be less democratic and experience lower development because they are rentier states (330).
• Rentier states do not depend on taxes to function, meaning that these governments tend to be less acountable and responsive to citizen needs. This thesis mainly comes from the historical French and British experience of democratization, where demands for representation were centered around concerns about taxation, leading to criticism that tax pressures elsewhere in the Middle East have not generately resulted in pressure for democratization (332-333).
• Oil-rich states are more capable of spending money on lavish public works and welfare systems, meaning that they are more capable of buying off their citizens. This also means that these governments have more options when their rule in challenged (333-334).
• This is also expressed in the capacity of states to invest in repressive capabilities. Iran spent most of the money from oil in the 1970s on its military and almost all of the money from an oil boom in Congo-Zaire in the 1990s was spent on the police and army (335).
• The concentration of economic activity in the form of rents collected by the state limits the influence of independent economic groups, like the bourgeois. These groups are thought to have been important to the development of democracy elsewhere and thus absence is seen as a cause of continued authoritarianism (334-335).
• The author's methodology is discussed from page 337 to page 340, and from page 346 to page 355.
• The results of the statistical tests suggest that oil and substantial mineral resources are both correlated to a lack of democracy, with oil having the stronger statistical relationship to authoritarianism (342).
• The relation of oil and mineral resources to democracy is more exagerated when oil or mineral extraction accounts for a small portion of the economy, however, and is less impactful that a large amount of oil or minerals (342-343).
• The effects of oil or substantial mineral deposits on democracy are not limited to certain regions, like the Middle East, but are a more general phenomenon, meaning that the theory can be broadly applied (346, 356).
• Even small amounts of oil in poor states will have a large effect on the level of democracy (356).
• Further statistical test tend to indicate, albeit weakly, the claims put forward by the rentier state hypothesis. That states dependent on rents from oil and mineral wealth are less democratic because they can spent without regard to popular demand, they can afford massive repressive infrastructure, and they avoid modernization-based democracy (356).
• The 'resource curse' is not inevitable, as demonstrated by the economic success and political stability of Malaysia, Chile, and Botswana. Overall, democracies are capable of resolving the distributional issues that lead to resource-based civil wars than dictatorships, meaning they are more likely to benefit from oil or mineral deposits (357).