Does Oil Hinder Democracy?
This is the title of an influential paper by Michael Ross (2001). Ross perspective differs from the literature analysed in the previous section for at least two reasons. First, being a political scientist, not an economist, Ross perspective is somehow different: he does not look at the interplay between resources and institutions in determining the economic performance of a country, but focuses on the causal relationship between natural (primarily energy) resources and democracy. He then attempts to find evidence supporting the different theories brought forward to explain this link. According to Ross and coherently with what stated in the previous section, such theories can be sorted into two categories: those suggesting that oil-generated wealth causes governments to do a poorer job in promoting economic development (through ineffective education policies, corruption, etc.) and those suggesting that oil-generated wealth makes countries less democratic; with Ross, our survey now follo
