Fuel Exports associated to Authoritarianism
Sub-Saharan Africa and Former Soviet Union during the 1990’s
Introduction au Mémoire réalisé pour l'obtention du Master of Arts in Political Science (University of Toledo, Ohio, USA).
Pour toute information supplémentaire sur ce document, merci de me contacter directement, ou de rentrer en rapport avec la bibliothèque universitaire de l'University of Toledo, Ohio.
Hypothesis
There is a positive association between the level of change in dependence on oil and gas exports and the degree of change in
authoritarianism of government, in Sub-Saharan African and former Soviet oil and gas producing countries during the 1990’s.
Introduction
At the end of the Cold War, the building of a more peaceful world seemed more likely, since there was no major conflict among super powers. The rush to economic
laissez-faire, promoted by free and expanding trade, was expected to spread democracy to developing countries, particularly among the Sub-Saharan African states and newly independent republics of
the Soviet Union. A number of reports suggest that there has been an increase in democracy in the world, though slight. In part, this may be a result of increasing economic interdependence and
trade growth in developing nations. With respect to degrees of political freedom, the proportion of countries considered “free” increased from 38 to 46 percent between 1993 and 2003, while the
fraction of states estimated to be “not free” decreased from 29 to 25 percent of states in the world, according to Freedom House,[1] a non profit, nonpartisan
institute, supported by the U.S. Department of State, USAID, USIA and other institutions.[2]
When looking more carefully at the correlation between democracy and growing economic interdependence, some of the economic determinants can be considered
counter-productive for the development of a democratic process. It seems to be the case for oil and natural gas exportation in countries strongly (or moderately) dependent on the revenues
generated by the trade of these two commodities. Indeed, the economic growth of most of these nations has not been followed by democratic development during the peaceful -to a certain extent-
decade of the 1990’s.
Particularly, there is a significant gap between a considerable economic development and a limited democratic development in the republics of the former Soviet
Union that are producers and exporters of oil and natural gas. Besides the gradual gains -in financial and economic terms- generated by the development of the business of oil and natural gas,
countries like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and the Russian Federation lost many of the little democratic achievements that the Glasnost Era[3] and the first years of their
independence from USSR had provided them. At the same time, other ex-Soviet republics, such as Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, or even Armenia, also facing a decent economic growth,
proceeded with a dynamic democratic development. The Baltic states eventually gained full membership within the European Union less than fifteen years after their partition from the Soviet Union,
showing that gaps between eastern and western Europe were not that impossible to reduce.
A comparable situation has been observed in most of the oil producing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1990’s, including Angola, Cameroon, the Republic
of Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Sudan, Nigeria and others. On the opposite side, there are African countries that carried on both economic growth and democratic development
during the last decade of the twentieth century. These are, among others, Benin, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, and Tanzania. Truthfully, these countries either have little or no
involvement in oil or natural gas exploitation, or have faced a decrease of their economic and trade dependency on these commodities. These elements, observed in two distinct regions of the world
that have relatively comparable historical (colonization), economic (resource boom), and commercial variables (strong dependence on the trade of a single commodity), allow us to test the time
period of the 1990’s and see if part of the Political Dutch Disease theory can be verified among their oil and gas exporting nations.[4]
The Political Dutch Disease (PDD) theory asserts that resource booms lead to the consolidation of the power of a country’s elite, which is usually represented by
its government. The argumentation of Lam and Wantchekon, the authors of the PDD theory, is preceded by an experimental investigation that effectively demonstrates the existence of a positive
correlation between natural resource abundance and dictatorship, mainly during the period between 1950 and 1990. In the countries studied, the commercialization of oil and natural gas represents
a significant share of their merchandise exports and of the Growth Domestic Product (GDP) share of goods and services traded, throughout the last decade. The purpose of this research is to expand
the existing literature on the PDD theory, by assessing and explaining the specific relationship between the trade of oil and natural gas (independent variable), and the level of authoritarianism
of political regimes in developing countries (dependent variable).
During the 1990’s, the association of these two variables has been partly positive among Sub-Saharan African oil producing nations, and even more so among former
Soviet republics whose dependence on the oil and gas sector is preeminent. The following empirical study is actually asserting this assumption. It is even showing that oil and natural gas
abundant countries do not need to be overwhelmingly dependent on the exports of these commodities to face the political consequences of this dependence. Changes in the level of authoritarianism
of governments are null or positive. Our study shows that a critical turning point exists when fuel exports exceed 15 percent of total merchandise exports. Therefore, a supposition that a
resource boom (specifically oil and natural gas) leads to a status quo or an increase (but generally to no decrease) of authoritarianism can be quantitatively observed among Sub-Saharan African
and former Soviet oil producing republics during the last decade.
[1] Freedom House Inc. “Freedom in the World 2004: gains
From Freedom Amid Terror and Uncertainty”, p.2, http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2004/essay2004.pdf
[2] Such as the Ford Foundation, The Eurasia Foundation,
The Byrne Foundation, The Soros Foundations, Grace Foundation Inc. See Freedom House “Funders”, http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/funders.htm
[3] Glasnost meaning “Openness” in Russian, it was a
domestic initiative of political reform introduced by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s to allow more freedom in public discussion and the arts, and to foster the process of
the democratization of the political process. It eventually lasted until the end of the Soviet Union’ Era, in 1991. See Glossary of The Politics of International Economic Relations,
(1999), www.indiana.edu/~ipe/glossry.html
[4] Lam, Ricky and Leonard Wantchekon. (2002). “ The
Political Dutch Disease”, New York University, November 16, www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/wantchekon/research/dutch.pdf