Exploring the New Frontiers of Natural Resource Politics

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Research on the politics of resource wealth has explored its effects on variety of political and economic factors such as regime type and regime stability as well as civil wars, economic development, and human development. While some scholars claim that natural resource endowment is a curse, others either completely disagree or provide conditional explanations for the impact of such wealth. Coming from diverse backgrounds, the participants will be introducing new theoretical and empirical contributions to the field from the perspective of natural resource politics.

This panel engages the current state of research on the politics of natural resource wealth in varying contexts and opens several new frontiers. The proposed papers bring new data sets on different resource types, question the validity of previous research, provide new case studies, and expand the boundaries of this research program. Among these, Brooks and Kurtz propose a new approach by dividing oil income by technological intensity and rent possibilities while Kaya and de Oliveira are introducing a new dataset, dissecting natural resource income by onshore and offshore oil as well as liquefied and pipeline natural gas. The two papers question the monolithic view regarding natural resource income.
Paasha Mahdavi, on the other hand, focuses on Alaska as a natural experiment setting and examine the influence of oil-to-cash transfers on political participation. In doing so, Mahdavi explores a new form of rentier effect. Finally, Jang and Smith do a spatial network analysis to observe the repercussions of China’s emergence as a major power. The authors find that China became a central actor in oil import networks by 2012 and import-dependent major powers pressure their allies less if they are an oil producer.

Note: Since Benjamin Smith is a non-presenting coauthor in one of the paper proposals, Ruchan Kaya will be discussing that paper.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Ruchan Kaya Austin College

Discussant

• Benjamin Smith University of Florida

Individual Presentations

• Oil and Development: Technology, Geology, and the ‘Curse’ of Natural Resources - Sarah M. Brooks, Ohio State University; Marcus J. Kurtz, Ohio State University

• Do Oil-to-cash Transfers Decrease Political Participation? Evidence from Alaska - Paasha Mahdavi, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Dissecting the Natural Resource Literature: A New Data Set - Renato Lima-De-Oliveira, Asia School of Business, in collaboration with MIT-Sloan; Ruchan Kaya, Austin College

• Great Powers and the World Oil Market: China’s Rise and Oil Export Geography - Hye Ryeon Jang, University of Florida; Benjamin Smith, University of Florida