Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder?

By Richard Snyder. 2006

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article proposes a political economy of extraction framework that explains political order and state collapse as alternative outcomes in the face of lootable wealth. Different types of institutions of extraction can be built on lootable resources—with divergent effects on political stability. If rulers are able to forge institutions of extraction that give them control of revenues generated by lootable resources, then these resources can contribute to political order by providing the income with which to govern. Conversely, the breakdown or absence of such institutions increases the risk of civil war by making it easier for rebels to organize. The framework is used to explain two puzzling cases that experienced sharply contrasting political trajectories in the face of lootable resources: Sierra Leone and Burma. A focus on institutions of extraction provides a stronger understanding of the wide range of political outcomes—from chaos, to dictatorship, to democracy—in resource-rich countries.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f2051039b82031655843c9048deaed7cc83019f

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Citations in the corpus

Conditioning the “Resource Curse”: Globalization, Human Capital, and Growth in Oil-Rich Nations (2011, background): “The quality of domestic institutions figures prominently in this research (Bulte, Damania, & Deacon, 2005; Mehlum et al., 2006; Snyder, 2006), although less manipulable factors such as geography, property rights, and historical factor endowments also have important effects on the utilization of reso”
De-agrarianization, re-agrarianization and local economic development: Re-orientating livelihoods in African artisanal mining communities (2010, background): “mining (ASM): a low tech, labour-intensive industry comprised of activities with few barriers to entry (Dreschler 2001; Heemskerk 2003; Snyder 2006; Hilson 2008).”