Stanford University

Is there a "Resource Curse"?: Mineral Wealth and Institutions in the Soviet Successor States

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Political Science has very few "accepted truths." One of the most prominent is the claim that countries endowed with natural resources, particularly mineral wealth, are doomed to suffer from poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, weak states, and authoritarian regimes - often referred to as the "resource curse." This claim, however, is not without its critics. In recent years, a few scholars have contended that the resource curse is essentially a myth. Rather, the main culprit is the absence of viable political, economic, and social institutions, such as secure property rights and an effective bureaucracy. Yet, their emphasis on the importance of strong institutions is entirely consistent with the conventional wisdom that they are challenging. The main point of departure between these two bodies of literature is whether weak institutions are endogenous to resource wealth, and thus, inevitable in mineral rich states, or exogenous, and thus, can account for the variation in performance across these states. The experience of the Soviet successor states, which consist of both mineral rich and mineral poor countries, provides a unique opportunity to assess the relationship between mineral wealth and institutional capacity, and, in doing so, to consider whether there is in fact a resource curse.

About the speaker:

Pauline Jones Luong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998 and was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies from 1998-1999 and 2001-2002. Her primary research interests include: the rise and impact on emerging institutions; identity and conflict; and the political economy of market reform. Her area of focus is the former Soviet Union, particularly the Russian Federation and the newly independent Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan). She has published a number of articles and books. Her books include Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and an edited volume entitled The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Cornell University Press, 2003)

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Pauline Jones Luong Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker Brown University
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Why did Russia Succeed in Building a Market Economy But Not a Democracy?

Nuclearization and Indian National Identity

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Professor Dittmer received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1971. His scholarly expertise is the study of contemporary China. He teaches courses on contemporary China, Northeast Asia, and the Pacific Rim.

His current research interests include a study of the impact of reform on Chinese communist authority, a survey of patterns of informal politics in East Asia, and a project on the China-Taiwan-US triangle in the context of East Asian regional politics. Professor Dittmer's recently published books and monographs include Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications (University of Washington Press, 1992), China's Quest for National Identity (with Samuel Kim, Cornell University Press, 1993), China Under Modernization (Westview Press, 1994), and South Asia's Nuclear Crisis (M. E. Sharpe, 2005.)

Dr. Dittmer's talk is the second seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

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Lowell Dittmer Professor, Political Science Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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Where Mistakes Were Made: The Politics and Psychology of Blame for Iraq

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Andrew Bennett is a professor of government at Georgetown University. He is the co-author, with Alexander George, of Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (MIT, 2005), and the author of Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism 1973-1996 (MIT Press, 1999). Bennett served as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Department of Defense in 1994-1995, and is a former fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

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Andrew Bennett Professor, Department of Government Speaker Georgetown University
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Georgian prime minister addresses FSI scholars, students

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On Dec. 7, 2006, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli met with FSI scholars and students and reported on his administration's reforms, negotiations with the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whether Georgia sought NATO membership, and energy security vis-à-vis Russia. Noghaideli, who became prime minister of the Republic of Georgia in February 2005, was considered a member of a team of young reformists headed by Zurab Zhvania and Mikheil Saakashvili in the years leading up to the Rose Revolution. He also discussed Russian sanctions on Georgian exports, and was optimistic about Georgia's ability to adapt to and rebound from such constraints. As an example he pointed to the success of a recent advertising campaign in neighboring Ukraine, in which billboards advertise, "Promote democracy. Drink Georgian wine."
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Capital Account Liberalization, the Cost of Capital, and Economic Growth

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Capital account liberalization was once seen as an inevitable step along the path to economic development for poor countries. Liberalizing the capital account, it was said, would permit financial resources to flow from capital-abundant countries, where expected returns were low, to capital-scarce countries, where expected returns were high. The flow of resources into the liberalizing countries would reduce their cost of capital, increase investment, and raise output (Fischer, 1998; Summers, 2000). The principal policy question was not whether to liberalize the capital account, but when - before or after undertaking macroeconomic reforms such as inflation stabilization and trade liberalization (McKinnon, 1991). Or so the story went.

In recent years intellectual opinion has moved against liberalization. Financial crises in Asia, Russia and Latin America have shifted the focus of the conversation from when countries should liberalize to if they should do so at all. Opponents of the process argue that capital account liberalization does not generate greater efficiency. Instead, liberalization invites speculative hot money flows and increases the likelihood of financial crises with no discernible positive effects on investment, output, or any other real variable with nontrivial welfare implications (Bhagwhati, 1998; Rodrik, 1998; Stiglitz 2002).

While opinions about capital account liberalization are abundant, facts are relatively scarce. This paper tries to increase the ratio of facts to opinions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of developing countries liberalized their stock markets, opening them to foreign investors for the first time. These liberalizations constitute discrete changes in the degree of capital account openness, which allow for a positive empirical description of the cost of capital, investment, and growth during liberalization episodes.

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CDDRL Working Papers
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Peter Blair Henry

The Russian Republic

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The third volume of The Cambridge History of Russia provides an authoritative political, intellectual, social and cultural history of the trials and triumphs of Russia and the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. It encompasses not only the ethnically Russian part of the country but also the non-Russian peoples of the tsarist and Soviet multinational states and of the post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the revolutions of the early twentieth century, chapters move through the 1920s to the Stalinist 1930s, World War II, the post-Stalin years and the decline and collapse of the USSR. The contributors attempt to go beyond the divisions that marred the historiography of the USSR during the Cold War to look for new syntheses and understandings. The volume is also the first major undertaking by historians and political scientists to use the new primary and archival sources that have become available since the break-up of the USSR.

  • Major new history of Russia in the twentieth century, using for the first time the new primary and archival sources that have become available since the breakup of the USSR
  • The approach is both chronological and thematical, dealing with large trends such as the transformation of the peasantry, urbanization, and the non-Russian peoples
  • Third volume in the new three-volume Cambridge History of Russia
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Cambridge University Press in "The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. III", Ronald Grigor Suny, ed.
Authors
Michael A. McFaul

Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough

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The dramatic series of protests and political events that unfolded in Ukraine in the fall of 2004--the "Orange Revolution"--were seminal both for Ukrainian history and the history of democratization. Its effects have already been felt from Kyrgyzstan to Lebanon and are likely to travel even further. Yet few anticipated such a dramatic democratic breakthrough in Ukraine. Revolution in Orange is a pioneering effort to describe and explain the events leading up to and through December 2004 from authors who had on-the-ground experience interacting with the various Ukrainian, Western, and Russian dramatis personae of the Orange Revolution. The result is a highly readable, deeply informed, and insightful volume with lasting value as an explicator of this remarkable episode in the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Michael A. McFaul

A Panel Discussion: The Struggle across the Taiwan Strait: The Divided China Problem

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This is a special event within the CDDRL Taiwan Democracy Program. In this panel discussion, three leading scholars in the field of China studies will address the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China from a long-term perspective.

Ramon H. Myers, senior fellow emeritus, was curator of the Hoover Institution's East Asian Collection for nearly three decades. He now is responsible for building the Hoover Institution's Chinese Archives and Special materials. He has written numerous books and articles related to Chinese economic history, Taiwan political and economic history, Japanese imperialism, and East Asian international relations. His most recent book, co-authored with Jialin Zhang and published by Hoover Institution Press is titled The Struggle Across the Taiwan Strait: The Divided China problem (2006).

Chih-yu Shih teaches cultural studies, political psychology and China studies at National Taiwan University and National Sun Yat-sen University. His recent publication includes Autonomy, Ethnicity and Poverty in Southwestern China: The State Turned Upside Down (2007), Navigating Sovereignty: World Politics Lost in China (2004), and Negotiating Ethnicity in China: Citizenship as a Response to the State.

Jialin Zhang is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He received his degree at the Moscow Institute of International Relations in 1960, and served as a senior fellow of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, PRC. His academic appointments include visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, Institute of International Economics in Washington, D.C., Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, etc. He is author and co-author of several Hoover essays, China's Response to the Downfall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, An Assessment of Chinese Thinking on Trade Liberation, U.S.-China Trade Issue after the WTO and the PNTR Deal-A Chinese Perspective, Some Implications of the Turnover of Political Power in Taiwan, The Debate on China's Exchange Rate-Should or Will it be revalued?

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Ramon Myers Senior Fellow Panelist Hoover Institution
Chih-yu Shih Professor Panelist National Taiwan University
Jialin Zhang Visiting Fellow Panelist Hoover Institution

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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