Full Product Details
Author: Ricardo M. Soares De Oliveira
Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
Imprint: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 9781850658580
ISBN 10: 1850658587
Pages: 380
Publication Date: 05 October 2007
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.
Reviews
'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 companies and 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 *
'The eight oil states in West Africa around the Gulf of Guinea together producesome five million barrels of oil a day and may hold as much as a tenthof the world's oil reserves. Soares de Oliveira has written an important studyof the impact of oil on the region's politics. Oil, he shows, has had a powerfullynegative effect on the quality of government. Even as the oil economythrives thanks to high oil prices and significant new investment from Westernoil companies, governments in the region have increasingly failed to providewelfare or security to their citizens and have instead used their states' oilrevenues 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 theseregimes and their increasing ability to absolve themselves of the regularresponsibilities of sovereignty, such as providing health care, education, andinfrastructure to their citizens. Even as they fail in these routine tasks, theycan 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'sstudy provides a rich political sociology of the oil curse in West Africa.'-Foreign Affairs
Author Information
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics, University of Oxford, fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford, and fellow of the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin. He is the author of Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea and co-editor of China Returns to Africa, both of which are published by Hurst.
