Can the Resource Curse Be Lifted?

Abundant natural resources may seem a national blessing, but in many countries around the world, they turn our to be a curse. Studies abound showing that developing countries sitting on massive oil or mineral reserves are less likely to be democratic, less likely to respect the basic rights of citizens, more likely to be ruled by  predatory political elites, and more likely to torn by brutal civil war. Is this just a deep, and deeply depressing, feature of the world we live in? Or can wealthier countries (which make up the market for most of these resources) and international institutions somehow intervene to alleviate or even lift the resource curse?

In this month’s Cato Unbound political philosopher Leif Wenar presents a provocative proposal for deploying an international property rights framework in which natural resources under control of the world’s most illiberal regimes are treated as stolen goods. Commenting on Wenar’s lead essay, we have Cato senior fellow Andrei Illarionov, the former chief economic advisor to Vladimir Putin;  journalist and historian John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil; and Washington University political philosopher Christopher Wellman, an expert in matters of international justice.

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