The Resource Curse and Democracy

Presentation by Prof. Michael Ross, Dept. of Political Science, UCLA made to the University of Guyana GREEN Institute (UGGI) Webinar held on June 2, 2020. Guyana is a middle-income country, rich in natural resources, but it has a history of ethnic rivalry, relatively weak institutions, and a relatively large public sector. With two major political parties that draw their traditional support from the two major ethnic groups, conflict continues to occur, and ethnic divisions become sharp at elections time, as the winner has control over all of the natural resource rents that are collected by the state. The tendency for conflict is not unrelated to the ethno-political division in the country and its resource abundance, the most recent manifestation of which was the discovery of 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, offshore by ExxonMobil. Prior to May 2015, Guyana was known largely for its role – or rather its stance, in global climate change negotiations, as a low-deforestation-high-forest-cover county. The idea of a “Green Petrostate” captures both the paradox and the potential for the country to use resource rents to avoid yet another paradox – the paradox of plenty, or the resource curse – that has afflicted many oil-rich countries.’ Guyana in fact had an early experience with the resource curse after the commodity price booms of the 1970s, during which large scale nationalisations were followed by large fiscal deficits and rising public debt, severe shortages, political conflicts, and social upheavals. Some four decades onwards, elections were held on March 2, 2020, but more than three months after, no final result has been announced. Though the country has gone to the polls every five years or so for many decades now, a combination of ethnic voting and the manipulation of the elections has ensured that democratic turnover is unusual: After 1964, there was a government that remained in power until 1992, after which the new government remained in power until 2015, when elections resulted in a change in government. The UGGI is happy to share with you this talk by Professor Michael Ross, the world’s foremost expert on the resource curse and democracy, on lessons for Guyana from his path breaking research on the topic. The UGGI is happy to share with you this talk by Professor Michael Ross, the world’s foremost expert on the resource curse and democracy, on lessons for Guyana from his path breaking research on the topic.