****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The book’s thesis—that the impact of oil on a country’s politics depends on the choices made by its leaders—is a useful corrective to an often-simplified narrative about the link between oil wealth and regime stability. Miriam Lowi, a professor at the College of New Jersey, makes a persuasive case for the broad strokes of her thesis—that a strategy combining co-optation with repression can boost the odds of regime survival. Yet the deeper one delves into the Algerian case study, the more one comes away with serious doubts about how oil and political outcomes are really linked.In my mind, Parts I and III were the finest in the book (i.e. not the section on Algeria). Part I contained one of the best and most incisive literature reviews on oil and political outcomes that I have read. The final section (Part III), which compares Algeria with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, brings the narrative together in a nice way (even if, inevitably, the coverage remains at a high level for the other countries). Finally, the bibliography is a treasure trove for those who want more. All these are major pluses for the book.Where the book falls short is in making very explicit the link between oil and political outcomes. Two issues come to mind. First, there is a frustratingly thin use of economic data and analysis to support the political interpretations offered in the book; and second, there is no great effort to tie down the precise timing of economic events to explain their linkage to political outcomes. Together, these weaknesses undermine the book’s thesis.For example, we read that “from 1986 until the mid-1990s, the Algerian economy’s growth rate remained consistently negative,” even though data from the IMF show four years of growth in that time. Or, we read that “from 1982 … the world demand for oil was declining,” even though it started to decline in 1979 and had bottomed out by 1983; plus the Algerian economy, whose fortunes this comment is meant to elucidate, was growing at 5-6% in 1982-1985. Later, we read (in a footnote) that, “since the 1980s, the bulk of Algeria’s hydrocarbon revenues derives from natural gas, not crude oil” (p. 105). Besides this being factually incorrect, we never again read about gas, and the discussion remains focused exclusively on oil.These comments may seem like nitpicking, but they play a key role in the thesis. For example, we read that, “in 1982, the first guerilla movement in the history of the independent [Algerian] state emerged” (p. 110). For a book exploring the link between oil and political outcomes it matters whether the author thinks that, by 1982, the economy was in doldrums already (when, in fact, it was growing). Similarly, the statement that, “by the late 1990s, the military backed regime’s grip on power had been restored” (p. 140) has to be reconciled with the fact that oil prices only spiked in 1999 and 2000, at a time when “the violence was winding down” anyway (p. 127).In the end, the reader comes away with a very good story of what happened in Algeria and why. But the precise link to oil is not very clear, and it is this vagueness that most impacts the book’s rating.
