Rethinking the Resource Curse

by Benjamin B. Smith, David Waldner

This Element documents the diversity and dissensus of scholarship on the political resource curse, diagnoses its sources, and directs scholarly attention towards what the authors believe will be more fruitful avenues of future research. In the scholarship to date, there is substantial regional heterogeneity and substantial evidence denying the existence of a political resource curse. This dissensus is located in theory, measure, and research design, especially regarding measurement error and endogenous selection. The work then turns to strategies for reconnecting research on resource politics to the broader literature on democratic development. Finally, the results of the authors' own research is presented, showing that a set of historically contingent events in the Middle East and North Africa are at the root of what has been mistaken for a global political resource curse.

96 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2021

About the author

Benjamin Smith, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, teaches courses on comparative politics, ethnicity and nationalism, oil in global politics, civil wars, and research design. His first book, Hard Times in the Land of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia, was published in 2007 Cornell University Press and his second book, Rethinking the Resource Curse, is forthcoming in April 2021 with Cambridge. Smith's research has been published in World Politics, the American Journal of Political Science, Studies in Comparative International Development, the Journal of International Affairs, and other journals and edited volumes. From 2002 to 2004, he was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

His research focuses on resource wealth and politics, national identity, social science research methods, and civil conflicts.