This book is an excellent study of why a huge oil field is not necessarily a blessing for a nation. Dr. Ross finds that oil tends to monopolize a nation's economy, squeezing out industry and other more progressive fields of enterprise. Oil countries are less transparent, less successful at long-term economic advancement, and very much less successful at bringing women into the workforce and the political arena. Even within the Muslim world, women do far better in non-oil countries than in oil-rich ones. Ross finds, however, that oil is not destiny; nations as diverse as Norway,Oman and Malaysia have managed oil wealth quite well, without all the bad effects. Also, in contrast to earlier work (including his own), he finds oil is not particularly deadly to democracy. The less affluent oil countries often have a good deal of conflict, but so do other resource-rich, weakly-governed countries.
So far so good, but the oil curse seems to me rather worse than Dr. Ross alleges. First, Dr. Ross does not consider environmental impacts in this book. That is a reasonable choice-he wants to focus on political economy in the strict sense--but it would seem to at least some observers that the worst effects of oil are the "externalities" that it passes on to impoverished local people, and to the world community, in the form of permanently ruined waters, forests, soils, and farmlands. Second, oil makes unnecessary any investment by the government in things like education and health care; the oil brings in plenty of money without those, and foreign workers generally come in to do the brainwork--often even the brawn-work. Third, Dr. Ross underplays the role of subsidies, and of the underhanded political games involved in capturing them, in world oil. Fourth, when Dr. Ross finds that democracy is not as much hurt by oil as some have argued, he is using a rather elastic definition of democracy; suffice it to say that Chavez' Venezuela qualifies. So do some other very shaky excuses for "democracy." Also, Dr. Ross does not deal with the really ugly political shenanigans of big oil. These include outright murder on a huge scale in Nigeria, where oil companies have hired goon squads to terrorize and eliminate local protesters. Less dramatic, but still serious, are the conditions in the United States under Bush and Cheney and in Canada under Stephen Harper. These oilmen ran, or run, their governments more or less as subsidiaries of their oil interets. One of many unpleasant results in the United States was the frontal attack on civil liberties and constitutional freedoms seen in the Patriot Act, the censorship of science (all references to possible bad effects of oil were censored from government publications and statements), attacks on public education and educators, and so on. Since the Bush days, big oil--especially the David and Charles Koch interests--have funded extreme right-wing politics, incliuding the Tea Party, and have provided essentially all the funding for the denial of global warming (or climate change) and of any human role in any warming that can be proved. They have gone on to fund general attacks on science and on environmental protection. We are facing the uncomfortable spectacle of a tiny handful of powerful people seizing the debates from the entire scientific community.
However, oil may not be notably worse than other resources; Dr. Ross cites Adam Smith on the bad effects of silver and gold mines, and discusses "conflict diamonds," but he might have also brought in the problems caused by mining in general, by large-scale export agriculture, and by other extractive industries. Oil is not unique. I think one reason that Dr. Ross does not find more bad effects for oil is that much of his comparison set is trapped by other, equally dismal forms of primary-product export.
Dr. Ross has a number of suggestions at the end of the book about increasing transparency and improving economic management, but one must fear that only mass political mobilization and relentless exposure of the full range of oil company activities will have much effect.
All this said, Dr. Ross' book is a superb job of marshalling very hard-to-find facts in particularly convincing and analytically sophisticated ways. It is a fascinating and important book, and must be basic reading for anyone interested in world oil questions. I raise the above points not to criticize but merely to add and extend the treatment a bit.
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Top reviews from other countries
jandig
The book is good and explains many things about the oil industry and ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2016