Overview

Full Product Details

9781850658573

Table of Contents

Reviews

'The eight oil states in West Africa around the Gulf of Guinea together produce some five million barrels of oil a day and may hold as much as a tenth of the world's oil reserves. Soares de Oliveira has written an important study of the impact of oil on the region's politics. Oil, he shows, has had a powerfully negative effect on the quality of government. Even as the oil economy thrives thanks to high oil prices and significant new investment from Western oil companies, governments in the region have increasingly failed to provide welfare or security to their citizens and have instead used their states' oil evenues to protect their hold on power and enrich small elites. Soares de Oliveiralabels states that have achieved a combination of international respectability,disastrous governance, and regime stability A successful failed states.A His study draws on a wealth of information to discuss the corruption of these regimes and their increasing ability to absolve themselves of the regular responsibilities of sovereignty, such as providing health care, education, and infrastructure to their citizens. Even as they fail in these routine tasks, they can demonstrate real skill and savvy in their negotiations with oil companiesand have successfully used oil wealth to buttress their international standing.That oil represents a curse is no longer a novel insight, but Soares de Oliveira's study provides a rich political sociology of the oil curse in West Africa.' -Foreign Affairs

Author Information

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is the Austin Robinson Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, an Associate of the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available