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Introduction
Despite the heady optimism with which economists in the 1960s considered the future
effects of resource wealth on developing nations, one thing has become clear by the early 21
st
century. Resource wealth, and particularly oil wealth, has had a net negative effect on the
polities and economies of exporting countries. In political science, there exists a loose consensus
that “oil hinders democracy” (Ross 2001).
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This consensus rests on a foundation of cross-
national statistical correlation (Ross 2001; Wantchekon 2000; Jensen and Wantchekon 2004),
numerous single and small-N studies (Yates 1996; Crystal 1990; Ahmad Khan 1994; Karl 1997;
Lowi 2004), and the simple observation that, of the 25 or so heavily oil export-dependent
countries in the developing world, very few are democratic and none are unproblematically
democratic.
Nonetheless, democracy has managed in five instances to take root in oil-rich soil, and in
three of those to become consolidated; whether or not they are outliers, to our minds, is less
important than the potential lessons they may hold for successful democratic consolidation. In
this essay we ask: under what conditions can democracy consolidate despite oil? The answers
we find call into question a number of prominent theories of both democratization and the
politics of the resource curse. Drawing on a comparative historical analysis of Congo-
Brazzaville, Ecuador, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, we suggest that oil’s effects
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See Herb (forthcoming) for a powerful challenge to this consensus. See also Karl (198_) and Clark (1994)
for case-based discussions of how oil has exerted pro-democracy effects in Venezuela and Congo, two of
the five cases we engage in this essay.
Convention