Oil and political survival

Abstract

Political economy theories on the natural resource curse predict that natural resource wealth is a determining factor for the length of time political leaderships remain in o¢ ce. Whether resource wealth leads to longer or shorter durations in political o¢ ce depends on the political incentives created by the natural resources, which in turn depend on the types of institutions and natural resource. Exploiting a sample of more than 600 political leadership durations in up to 152 countries, we nd that both institutions and resource types matter for the e¤ect that natural resource wealth has on political survival: (i) wealth derived from natural resources a¤ects political survival in intermediate and autocratic, but not in democratic, polities; and (ii) while oil and non-lootable diamonds are associated with positive e¤ects on the duration in political o¢ ce, minerals are associated with negative duration e¤ects.