Rent Dependency: Bad for Quality of Government

Abstract

This paper introduces quality of government rather than regime type as dependent variable in studies of the political effects of natural resources. It consists of two parts. First, it theorizes the role of fiscal dependency of oil and gas rents in relation to three different dimensions of quality of government; low corruption, bureaucratic quality and legal impartiality. Second, it finds significant, negative effects of oil and gas rent dependency on all three dimensions of quality in a sample of 139 states in the period 1984 to 2006. The results hold for inclusion of control variables such as regime type, income, region and religion.