African Democracy and Oil: A Combustible Mix
The consequences of oil politics. Photo by Elisa Valle Marcos
Oil and democracy: do they mix?
A few days ago in his FiveThirtyEight blog, Nate Silver considered Egypt, Oil and Democracy:
There is a large body of literature in political science connecting oil wealth and democratization. Although the conclusions are not universally accepted and there are some exceptions — Norway, for instance, is one of the most petroleum-rich countries in the world, and also one of the most democratic — the consensus view is toward what Thomas L. Friedman refers to as The First Law of Petropolitics: oil and democracy do not mix.
He then pointed to data from 21 Middle Eastern and North African countries, which showed an inverse relationship between democracy and resource wealth. In other words, the more oil a country has, the less likely it is to be democratic. Continue reading . . .
