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Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Country Abbreviations -- Chapter One. The Paradoxical Wealth of Nations -- Appendix 1.1 A Note on Methods and Measurements -- Chapter Two. The Trouble with Oil Revenues -- Chapter Three. More Petroleum, Less Democracy -- Appendix 3.1 A Statistical Analysis of Oil and Democracy -- Chapter Four. Petroleum Perpetuates Patriarchy -- Appendix 4.1 A Statistical Analysis of Oil and the Status of Women -- Chapter Five. Oil-Based Violence -- Appendix 5.1 A Statistical Analysis of Oil and Civil Conflict -- Chapter Six. Oil, Economic Growth, and Political Institutions -- Chapter Seven. Good News and Bad News about Oil -- References -- Index

Countries dependent on oil and mineral exports are often advised to diversify their economies, yet surprisingly little is known about how this can be done. This paper reviews the recent literature on diversification in resource-dependent states and suggests it has been constrained by missing and inconsistent data, and a reliance on diversification measures that are relatively uninformative for resource-rich states. It then uses an improved measure of export concentration from Papageorgiou and Spatafora to document three empirical patterns over the last half-century: the divergence between oil-producing states and non-oil states; the reconcentration of exports in most oil and mineral producing states since 1998, caused by the boom in commodity prices; and the heterogeneity of the oil producers, marked by greater diversification in Latin America and Southeast Asia, mixed performances in the Middle East, and greater concentration in Africa and the former Soviet Union. While change in the former Soviet Union was spurred by large new discoveries, the diversification failure of all oil- producing states in both North and sub-Saharan Africa is striking, and stands in contrast to the region's non-oil producers. The paper concludes with a research agenda for deepening our understanding of this issue.

Since 2001, hundreds of academic studies have examined the "political resource curse," meaning the claim that natural resource wealth tends to adversely affect a country's governance. There is now robust evidence that one type of mineral wealth, petroleum, has at least three harmful effects: It tends to make authoritarian regimes more durable, to increase certain types of corruption, and to help trigger violent conflict in low- and middle-income countries. Scholars have also made progress toward understanding the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes and the conditions that make them more likely. This essay reviews the evidence behind these claims, the debates over their validity, and some of the unresolved puzzles for future research.

Since 2001, hundreds of academic studies have examined the 'political resource curse,' meaning the claim that natural resource wealth tends to adversely affect a country's governance. There is now robust evidence that one type of mineral wealth, petroleum, has at least three harmful effects: It tends to make authoritarian regimes more durable, to increase certain types of corruption, and to help trigger violent conflict in low- and middle-income countries. Scholars have also made progress toward understanding the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes and the conditions that make them more likely. This essay reviews the evidence behind these claims, the debates over their validity, and some of the unresolved puzzles for future research. Adapted from the source document.

Even before this year's Arab uprisings, the Middle East was not an undifferentiated block of authoritarianism. The citizens of countries with little or no oil, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, generally had more freedom than those countries with lots of it, such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. No country with more than a fraction of the per capita oil wealth of Bahrain, Iraq or Libya has ever successfully gone from dictatorship to democracy. Scholars call this the oil curse, arguing that oil wealth leads to authoritarianism, economic instability, corruption, and violence conflict. Adapted from the source document.

The world has grown much more peaceful over the past 15 years-except for oil-rich countries. Oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, helps fund insurgents, and aggravates ethnic grievances. And with oil ever more in demand, the problems it spawns are likely to spread further. Adapted from the source document.

Women have made less progress toward gender equality in the Middle East than in any other region. Many observers claim this is due to the region's Islamic traditions. I suggest that oil, not Islam, is at fault; and that oil production also explains why women lag behind in many other countries. Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. This argument has implications for the study of the Middle East, Islamic culture, and the resource curse.