State hydrocarbon rents, authoritarian survival and the onset of democracy: Evidence from a new dataset

Abstract

This article surveys the effects of state hydrocarbon rents—defined as government income from oil and natural gas— on authoritarian survival and the onset of democracy. We also examine the association of changing state hydrocarbon rents with state spending and taxation based on a new collection of historical data, the Global State Revenues and Expenditures dataset. Using these novel data, we provide evidence that increasing state rents from oil and gas hinder democratization by reducing citizens’ tax burden. However, an increase in the oil and gas income flowing directly into state coffers does not appear to lower the average risk of ouster by rival authoritarian elites. We have found no evidence of the systematic distributional effects of state hydrocarbon income on regime survival.