Abstract
It’s worth noting right up front, that the premise of essays such as these – where facts and ideology become equally embroiled into the author’s argument – reflect as much about the issue at hand as the author himself. For some, the loss of one innocent life for the conquest of oil would constitute a curse. For the utilitarian, some value of the human life would be surmised and a crude calculation would be made: does the profitability of the energy markets reconcile the amount of blood spilt or misery endured. Who is to say which one is right? There is nothing new or insightful about any of these deductions as long they continue to aggregate the amount of life lost against the wealth oil procures. The methodology is essentially the same – different metrics may be added or ignored at the behest of the writer – but it’s usually a matter of personal convictions when conclusions diverge. So how can this essay avoid falling victim to tired lines of reasoning and inject fresh thinking into the debate? How can an argument be fashioned that gives nuance to a question that is as complex, subjective and ostensibly unanswerable as this one? Furthermore, one must be sensitive of making any assertions when they haven’t similarly suffered; it would take a brave soul to proclaim oil was a blessing when he himself hadn’t experienced its tragedies.
Methodology and Scope
There are obvious parameters that need to be drawn before undertaking this question, not least defining the thresholds for what constitutes blessed and cursed . Imperatively, causality between the acquisition and exploitation of oil and natural gas reserves must be established in contributing to the fulfilment (or unfulfillment) of these thresholds. Superficially, many of the countries in the Middle East mired in crisis may be seen to suffer the curse of oil when other factors, like ethno-sectarian divisions, are in fact the chief cause. It’s critical that causality be linked, not just correlation. Furthermore, the etymological meanings of blessed and cursed in Arabic - مبارك and ملعون respectively – will better guide which metrics to apply by considering local sensibilities. مبارك (mubarak), invokes connotations of fortune and auspicious occasions while ملعون (mal’un) in Islamic parlance means “deprived of Allah’s mercy”, which can be extended somewhat to denote a sense of hopelessness and persecution. The metrics employed below aims to best capture these impressions.
The crux of any discussion of the resource curse – or its existence at a given place – is to delineate when economic development endowed by the resource no longer justifies the stagnant growth in other sectors of the economy (commonly referred as the Dutch Disease) or determine thresholds where its exploitation has become incongruent with the livelihoods and aspirations of the people. Again, it’s a particularly crass question that leaves open for its interpreter to ascertain the limits of human misery for economic development. In constructing the methodology, cognizant not to simply regurgitate similar economic, social and security arguments, reframing the question is necessary. Is oil a blessing or a curse in the Middle East can be treated and investigated across varying dimensions: at the regional level, at the state level and on a more micro level: the people within a given state. The task of the essay hence become two-fold: to refrain from imposing personal convictions in determining whether oil is a blessing or a curse and to capture the totality of oil’s influence across all units of analysis. This essay will expand on the work “A political economy of human rights : Oil, natural gas and states incentives to repress”, which quantifies the influence oil has on state’s propensity to repress. It’s a more rigorous approach than a qualitative argument, which contorts under the weight of the writer’s opinion.
In their study, Jacquiline H.R DeMeritt and Joseph K Young sought to understand why states repress their citizens; and quantify the propensity (if any) for states which don’t rely on its citizenry for generating revenue (archetypal of extraction economies), in pursuing repressive policies. DeMeritt and Young constructed econometric models using a cross-national database with a variety of indicators for oil, fuel rents and human rights violations to test this hypothesis. Across all specifications and different indicators, it was found a substantive and significant relationship between states relying on oil and the violation of personal integrity rights, indicative that oil is in fact a curse. The results are shown below.
DeMeritt and Youth explaining the results of Figure 1:
Figure 1 demonstrates that being an oil exporter decreases the probability that a state applies a low level of repression. In particular, it reduces the probability of scoring 0 on our CIRI scale by 1.4%, reduces the probability of scoring a 1 by 4.5%, and reduces the probability of scoring a 2 by 5.8%. Next, Figure 1 shows that becoming an oil exporter has no substantively significant impact on scoring a 3, sing the 95% confidence interval contains zero. Finally, and as anticipated by Hypothesis 1, Figure 1 shows that being an oil exporter increases the probability that a state applies high levels of repression. Specifically, it increases the probability of scoring a 4 on our inverted CIRI scale by 6.2%, raises the probability of scoring a 5 by 2.8%, heightens the probability of scoring a 6 by 1.0%, heightens the probability of scoring a 7 by 0.4% and heightens the probability of scoring an 8 by 0.1%. In short, Figure 1 demonstrates that becoming an oil exporter leads to higher level of human rights abuse. (Young, 2013)
Though the analysis is rather technical, the insight is fairly simple. Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Personal Integrity Rights index is the primary dependent variable, which is simply a composite index that incorporates a myriad of different human right data sets (extrajudicial killing, torture, disappearance and political imprisonment etc. (Young, 2013)). Typically, the index ranges from 0 to 8, with increasing values representing increasing government violations for human rights. However, it’s coding been inverted here to make the results intuitive. Now, higher values denote increasing personal integrity abuse and for our purposes, a ملعون, or cursed, state of affairs. To refer back to Figure 1, we can discern that being an oil exporter reduces the likelihood of scoring a 2, 1 and 0 by 5.8%, 4.5% and 1.4% respectively: values which represent increasing respect for human rights. Conversely, the results demonstrate that being an oil exporter increases the probability that a state pursues repressive policies. This is represented by the increasing probabilities in attaining higher scores. Specifically, the likelihood of scoring a 4 heightens by 6.2%; of scoring a 5 rises by 2.8%; and scoring a 6 spikes by 1.0%. Put simply, the conditions that are conducive to a مبارك (blessed) environment are diminished for an oil exporter. It asserts unequivocally that oil is a curse for the Middle East.
A Double Edged Sword Steeped In Blood: Why?
Now that we know that oil positively influences the propensity of states to act oppressively, naturally the question becomes: why?
There are two well-known central claims on why and how repressive regimes blossom. Firstly, political leaders repress in response to domestic threats and secondly, democratic regimes repress less often and less severely than their authoritarian counterparts. However, there are obviously more factors at play. In their study, DeMeritt and Young praised the recent effort by a multitude of scholars in exploring other factors that imbue repressive qualities within a state. They listed a few examples, including Franklin (1997) who argued that the receipt of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans were contingent upon conditions which increases the state’s proclivity to repress; Anouharb and Cingranelli (2007) also found that structural adjustment programs both by the World Bank and the IMF negatively influence human rights; Hafner-Burton (2009) finds that preferential trade agreements with strong enforcement mechanism improve respect for human rights; and Young (2009) finds support for the argument that state capacity covaries negatively with human rights abuse (Young, 2013). It becomes evident that the complexity of why state leaders oppress their citizen belies one singular motivator. Whatever curse has bedevilled the Middle East it isn’t strictly at the hands of its vast energy sector.
In any case, why is this so? What are the conditions and structures that oil rich states have that makes it more conducive for repressive regimes to take root?
DeMeritt and Youth explore this briefly in their analysis, however a few assumptions must be made. Firstly, it is given that repression is an attractive domestic policy tool: cheap, easily implemented and effective. Otherwise, states wouldn’t actively pursue such policies and its occurrence would mean the unfortunate biproduct of other forces. We assume too, that state leaders wish to maximize revenue under constraints. This is ostensibly just an extension of the Rational Actor Assumption within Structural Realism. Should this assumption not hold, then the repressive tendencies by the state would appear arbitrary and illogical. However, should these two assumption hold then political leaders engage in a cost analysis of sorts to assess whether repressive policies are tenable and sustainable. One potential source of revenue is the domestic population, and repression reduces this kind of income. Because one potential source of revenue is procured and taxed from the domestic population, leaders would have to weigh the benefits of repression (e.g. quelling dissent) against its costs (e.g. lost revenue). As the state’s revenue from fuel (oil and natural gas) increases, the portion of the economy reliant on citizens for cash flow – and with it the cost of repression – diminishes (Young, 2013). As a result, we expect each state’s use of repression to covary positively with its revenue from fuel. This is reflected in the findings of Figure 1.
Conclusion
A strong body of empirical work has linked domestic threat and political institutions to increased violations of human rights. Even when controlling for these factors, DeMeritt and Youth established that states that rely on oil and fuel rents for income are more likely to repress than other states. This is especially acute in the Middle East and as such, predicates my argument that oil is a curse for the region.
Obviously a question such as this, where thresholds must be defined and gauged arbitrarily, leaves plenty of room for the writer to leave his own ideological mark in his answer. It’s a tempting route. However, it doesn’t contribute anything new or novel to the discussion. Two polemicists could convincingly argue the two sides of the debate with only same facts at hand. Oil in the Middle East is a curse to me because it has demonstrable influence on states adopting repressive policies. Another, far more pragmatic person, could quite reasonably dismiss such a view by describing the often tragic realities of the Middle East as simply the price of progress. However, the use of the econometric models as constructed by DeMeritt and Youth, provides an element of confidence and insight that qualitative lines of reasoning lacks.
Bibliography
Young, J. H. (2013). A political economy of human rights: Oil, natural gas, and state incentives to repress. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 99-120.
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