Crude Democracy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521515009)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that natural resource wealth promotes autocracy. Oil and other forms of mineral wealth can promote both authoritarianism and democracy, the book argues, but they do so through different mechanisms; an understanding of these different mechanisms can help elucidate when either the authoritarian or democratic effects of resource wealth will be relatively strong. Exploiting game-theoretic tools and statistical modeling as well as detailed country case studies and drawing on fieldwork in Latin America and Africa, this book builds and tests a theory that explains political variation across resource-rich states. It will be read by scholars studying the political effects of natural resource wealth in many regions, as well as by those interested in the emergence and persistence of democratic regimes.

Author: Thad Dunning
ISBN-10: 0521515009
ISBN-13: 9780521515009
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/08/2008
Pages: 350
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2009