Does oil really curse democracy? A long-run time-series analysis of 127 countries

The resource curse is a topic studied intensively in both economics and political science. Much of the focus is now on whether oil affects democratic institutions. We further the debate on this aspect through the use of both additional measures of democracy and multiple time-series estimation strategies. We find no robust long-run effect of oil abundance on any of the following measures of democracy: Polity, Polcon, Civil Liberties, or Political Rights, over the period 1974-2012. We use different country and period samples to respond to the findings of others suggesting that the effects of oil abundance may differ between Latin America, the Middle East, mature oil producers, or that they become significantly negative only post-1980. In each case we still do not find a robust relationship. We emphasize long-run effects not only because they match the slow pace of institutional change, but also because they are consistent even in the presence of reverse causality.