Oil and Russia. An Analysis of Resource Politics

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Political systems in general and in comparison, grade: 1.3, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, course: Comparing Political Systems, language: English, abstract: The majority of publications on the so-called resource curse tend to focus on key characteristics identified by Michael Ross such as modernization, rentier state and repression. This paper is an attempt to identify various other causal mechanisms that contribute to the symbiosis between increasing oil revenues and growing authoritarianism in Russia. With a mixture of various qualitative and quantitative data, the discussion focuses on the causal implications of corruption, freedom of media and pluralistic ownership structure while referring to the ways that they are exploited by Putin government. The conclusion idealizes an alternative approach for the study of resource politics through the case of Russia and provides recommendations for further research.