Political Economy of Natural Resource Conflicts

G53.3400.004
Müşerref Yetim
Email: my397@nyu.edu Room 212
Office and phone number: 19 West 4 th St, Room 219 212 998 8537
Office Hours: Th 2:00–4:00 pm or by appointment

Course Description
This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the core concepts, processes, theories, and issues of
natural resource conflicts. Since the mid-1980s, natural resource conflicts have become the focus of scholarly
debate as the broadening concept of security has begun to include issues such as natural resources,
environmental change, and natural resource degradation and depletion and its impact on international order
and stability. Contemporary resource problems, rooted in the overuse and mismanagement of these resources
and the subsequent degradation of ecosystems, often do not respect state boundaries and so present
challenges that are local, international, and in some cases even global in nature. Moreover, the continuing
human modification of our natural environment is, qualitatively and quantitatively, on a vastly greater scale
than that witnessed in previous centuries. Increasingly, therefore, conflicts over natural resources are defined
broadly to include conflicts over how to govern global commons such as the air, the oceans, fisheries, forests,
and how to protect biodiversity. Both the scarcity and degradation of natural resources, as well as an
abundance of natural resources, can be a source of conflict within and among states. The focus throughout
this course will be on divergent theoretical approaches to natural resource conflicts at three levels of analysis:
domestic, international, and global. Our objective is to gain an understanding of the nature of resource-
based conflicts and to acquire the necessary tools and knowledge to tackle the challenges facing humanity in
the 21 st century. The course is organized around the division of natural resources into three different
categories: 1) non-renewable resources (such as oil, strategic minerals and gems); 2) renewable (such as
water, forest, and fisheries); 3) and global common pool resources (the air, the oceans, forests, and fisheries).
We will consider the various ways each category presents its own challenges and engenders different types of
conflicts at the state, international, and global level.

This course addresses the following questions: How do countries secure natural resources crucial for their
economy? Is there a causal relationship between natural resource scarcity and violent conflicts? What is the
cause of conflict: natural resources scarcity as claimed by Neo-Malthusians or natural resource abundance as
claimed by Cornucopians or neo-classical economists? How do countries design and implement policies
related to energy, water, climate, and so on? What is the role of national and multinational oil companies in
the world oil market? Are countries with abundant resources cursed? What is the relationship between
natural resources and economic and political development? Is there a causal relationship between natural
resources and authoritarian governments? Is the price of oil inversely correlated with the spread of political
freedom? Could Nigeria have followed the same development trajectory as Denmark if it had not discovered
oil? Do high commodity prices undermine democracy in oil and mineral rich countries, such Russia and
Venezuela? What is the relationship between oil and minerals and civil wars or low intensity conflicts? How
does resource security fuel tension between the great powers? How do institutions matter in tackling
overarching environmental issues such as the degradation of forests, the issue of climate change? How do
some groups overcome collective action problems? What is the role of institutions in the exploitation of
natural resources? How did water become a source of contentious politics? How did the effective management
of water conflicts one of the biggest challenges facing us today? How do we achieve effective global
environmental governance in water? What role does the NGO, the UN, the WB, the WTO, and the ILC,
other international organizations play in resolving natural resource based conflicts?

This course is divided into five parts. In Part I, we will review the key concept, terms, and issues in the
literature focusing on the relationship between natural resources, security, environment, domestic,
international, and global conflicts. Part II concentrates on the resource curse (or lack thereof) and the
relationship between natural resources and economic and political development and civil war. In Part III, the
focus is wars concentrates on how non-renewable natural resources, such as oil, strategic minerals, and gems
are facilitators or causes of conflict within and between states. Detailed attention will be given to the
international politics of oil and the relationship between oil, geopolitics, and the global economy. In Part IV,
the focus shifts to renewable resources and more specifically to water. As a key component of critical
ecosystem, water and its efficient, equitable, and sustainable management as one of the biggest challenges as
the struggle for creating a global framework for the governance of water has become a source of contention.
Part V deals with global common pool resources (the air, the oceans, forests, and fisheries). Finally, in Part
VI, the focus is on institutional frameworks (or lack thereof) for governing natural resources, and thus on the
collective action and bargaining problems challenging states in their attempt to achieve a sustainable
development. We will explore contending theoretical approaches and their solutions for the peaceful
resolution of conflicts over natural resources and their sustainable, efficient, and equitable governance.
Key topics for the course include (but are not limited to) the following: natural resource security, the
sustainable development, the new colonialism, the lateral pressure hypothesis, the resource curse hypothesis,
factor endowment hypothesis, frontier expansion hypothesis, open access exploitation hypothesis, the
problem of commons, the tragedy of commons, the problem of sustainability of resources, property rights,
negative externalities, the problem of global market failure, the problem of social cost, the problem of
institutional choice, multilateralism, the problems of institution building and the role of institutions in
governing commons, and collective action theories.

Course Requirements
This course will follow a seminar format. Requirements for this course are: 1) to attend all class meetings; 2)
to participate actively in the class discussions; 3) to do all of the assigned reading for each week before the
class and post at least two discussion questions and a two-page reaction précis on the blackboard by 12 PM
on Monday, the day before the class week 2 through week 13 (8 total; see the guidelines for more
information); 4) to give three 10 to 15-minute oral presentations accompanied by a class handout (on the
selection of assigned readings and should be submitted by noon on the day of class); 5) to write an original
15-page research paper focusing either on the theoretical and conceptual issues covered in the course or on
the application of these theories and concepts to one or more case studies that fit students’ own research
interests; 6) to submit a research paper proposal describing your topic for my approval no later than
October 14, 2010; 7) and to give a 10-minute oral presentation of your research paper on December 14,
2010. The final research paper is due on December 9, 2010, 15:00 PM.

Grading Criteria
Research Paper and Presentation (50%)
Oral presentations with handouts (5% each)
Class Participation and précises (35%)
Readings

There are several books and many articles required for this course.
Most of the books and articles are available online at ebrary, JSTOR, ProQuest, Lexis-Nexis, other
electronic databases, and or in a course packet available for purchase in the bookstore.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
*Greiner, A., and W. Semmler. 2008. The Global Environment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Barbier, Edward B. 2005. Natural Resources and Economics Development. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kahl, Colin. 2006. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Dunning, Thad. 2008. Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
*Parra, F. 2004. Oil Politics: A Modern History of Petroleum. I.B. Tauris.
*Klare, Micheal T. 2009. Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. Holt.
El-Gamal, M. A. and Amy M. Jaffe. 2009. Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Luong, Pauline Jones and Erika Weinthal. 2010. Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in
Soviet Successor States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Goldman, Marshall I. 2009. Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Conca, Ken. 2006. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Harrison, Kathryn and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, eds. 2010. Global Commons, Domestic Decisions: The
Comparative Politics of Climate Change. Cambridge: MIT Press
Cole, Daniel H. 2002. Pollution and Property: Comparing Ownership Institutions for Environmental
Protection. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tsai, Lily L. 2007. Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural
China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Recommended Readings
McNeill, J. R. 2000. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental of the Twentieth Century World. New
York: W. W. Norton.
Dasgupta, P., K.G. Maler, and A. Vercelli. 1998. The Economics of Transnational Commons. Oxford: Ocford
University Press.
Dobkowski, Michael N. and Isidor Wallimann. 2002. On the Edge of Scarcity: Environment, Resources,
Population, Sustainability, and Conflict. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Chaoudry, Kiren Aziz. 1997. The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Karl, Terry Lynn. 1997. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Vandewalle, Dirk. 1998. Libya since Independence: Oil and State-Building. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Collier, Paul. et al. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil Wars and Development Policy. Washington, DC:
World Bank. http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/00536_breakingconflict.pdf
Collier, Paul. 2010. The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global
Prosperity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Marcel, Valerie. 2006. Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East. Brookings.
Khagram, S. 2004. Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Waterbury, John. 2002. The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Scott, Anthony. 2008. The Evolution of Resource Property Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and Theory of Groups. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Ghate, R., N. Jodha, P. Mukhopadhyay. 2008. Promise, Trust, and Evolution: Managing the Commons of
South Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Benvenisti, Eyal and Moshe Hirsch, eds., 2004. The Impact of International Law on International
Cooperation: Theoretical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Topics and Readings

Part I: Overview—Concepts, Issues, and Problems
Week 1 (September 9): Introduction and sign-ups for presentations
During this meeting we will go over the syllabus and discuss the outline of the course, the research paper
and presentations.
Assigned Readings:
UN Human Development Report 2005, chapter 5 on Violent Conflict.
UN Human Development Report 2006. Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis.
Available from http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/
Recommended Readings:
Diehl, Paul F. 1998. Environmental Conflict: An Introduction. Journal of Peace Research 35 (3): 275–277.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. 1994. Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases.
International Security 19 (1): 5–40.
McNeill, J. R. 2000. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental of the Twentieth Century World. New
York: W. W. Norton.
Week 2 (September 16): Concepts, Issues, and Problems
Assigned Readings:
Ostrom. Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Recommended Readings:
Dasgupta, P., K.G. Maler, and A. Vercelli. 1998. The Economics of Transnational Commons. Oxford: Ocford
University Press.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The Tragedy of Commons. Science 162 (3859): 1243–1248.
Haas, Peter M. 2002. Constructing Environmental Conflicts from Resource Scarcity. Global Environmental
Politics 2: 1–11.
Dobkowski, Michael N. and Isidor Wallimann. 2002. On the Edge of Scarcity: Environment, Resources,
Population, Sustainability, and Conflict. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Midlarsky, Manus I. 1995. Environmental Influences on Democracy: Aridity, Warfare, and a Reversal of the
Causal Arrow. Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (2): 224–262.
Levy, Mark A. 1995. Is the Environment a National Security Issue? International Security 20: 35–62.

Part II: Natural Resources and Economic and Political Development

Week 3 (September 23): The Resource Curse
Assigned Readings:
Ross, Michael. 1999. The Political Economy of the Resource Curse. World Politics 51 (2): 297–322.
Sachs, Jeffrey D. and Andrew Warner. 2001. The Curse of Natural Resources. European Economic Review
45 (4): 827–838.
Haber, Steven, and Victor Menaldo. Do Natural Resources Fuel Authotarianism: A reappraisal of the
Resource Curse.
Henry, Clement M. 2004. Algeria’s Agonies: Oil Rent Effects in a Bunker State. Journal of North African
Studies 9 (2): 68–81.
Luong, Pauline and J. Erika Weinthal. 2006. Rethinking the Resource Curse: Ownership Structure,
Institutional Capacity, and Domestic Constraints. Annual Review of Political Science 9: 241–263.
Week 4 (September 30): Natural Resources and Economic Development
Assigned Readings:
*Greiner, A., and W. Semmler. 2008. The Global Environment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Barbier, Edward B. 2005. Natural Resources and Economics Development. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Recommended Readings:
Chaoudry, Kiren Aziz. 1997. The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Karl, Terry Lynn. 1997. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Week 5 (October 7): Natural Resources and Political Development
Assigned Readings:
Dunning, Thad. 2008. Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Recommended Readings:
Vandewalle, Dirk. 1998. Libya since Independence: Oil and State-Building. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Week 6 (October 14): Natural Resources and Civil Wars
Research Paper Proposals are due
Assigned Readings:
Kahl, Colin. 2006. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
de Soysa, Indra. 2002. Paradise Is a Bazaar? Greed, Creed, and Governance in Civil War, 1989–99.
Journal of Peace Research 39: 395–416.
Ross, Michael. 2004. What do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil Wars. Journal of Peace Research
41 (3): 337–356.
Recommended Readings:
Collier, Paul. et al. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil Wars and Development Policy. Washington, DC:
World Bank.
Ross, Michael. 2006. A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War. Annual Review of Political Science 9:
265–300.
de Soysa, Indra. 2000. The Resource Curse: Are Civil Wars Driven by Rapacity or Paucity? In Mats Berdal
and David M. Malone eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2000), pp. 113–35.
 Part III: Resource Scarcity, Degradation, and Abundance as Facilitators of Conflicts
Week 7 (October 21): The Geopolitics of Energy
Assigned Readings:
*Parra, F. 2004. Oil Politics: A Modern History of Petroleum. I.B. Tauris.
*Klare, Michael T. 2009. Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. New York: Holt.
Week 8 (October 28): International Politics of Oil
Assigned Readings:
El-Gamal, M. A. and Amy M. Jaffe. 2009. Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Recommended Readings:
Marcel, Valerie. 2006. Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East. Brookings
Week 9 (November 4): International Politics of Oil II
Assigned Readings:
*Luong, Pauline Jones and Erika Weinthal. 2010. Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in
Soviet Successor States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Goldman, Marshall I. 2009. Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part IV: Water

Week 10 (November 11): Renewable Natural Resources: Scarcity and Degradation of
Water Resources
Assigned Readings:
Conca, Ken. 2006. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
*Khagram, S. 2004. Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Recommended Readings:
Waterbury, John. 2002. The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Allan, J. Anthony. 1997. ‘Virtual Water’: A Long Term Solution for Water Short Middle Eastern Economies?
SOAS Occasional Papers No. 3. Available at http://www.soas.ac.uk/Geography/WaterIssues/Papers.

Part V: The Global Commons

Week 11 (November 18): The Global Commons—the Atmosphere and the Oceans
Assigned Readings:
Harrison, Kathryn and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom. 2010. Global Commons, Domestic Decisions: The
Comparative Politics of Climate Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Recommended Readings:
Brauninger, Thomas and Thomas Konig. 2000. Making Rules for Governing Global Commons: The Case
of Deep-Sea Mining. The Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 (5): 604–629.
Sundgren, Jan. 1993. Lateral Pressure Theory as Applied to Global Warming: An Initial Assessment.
International Political Science Review 14: 87–102.
 Part VI: Institutions and Natural Resource Conflicts
Week 12 (December 2): Property Rights—Prerequisite for Resolution of Problems of
Conflict and Development?
Assigned Readings:
Cole, Daniel H. 2002. Pollution and Property: Comparing Ownership Institutions for Environmental
Protection. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Casari, Marco. 2007. Emergence of Endogenous Legal Institutions: Property Rights and Community
Governance in the Italian Alps. Journal of Economic History 67 (1): 191–226.
Recommended Readings:
Scott, Anthony. 2008. The Evolution of Resource Property Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Benvenisti, Eyal and Moshe Hirsch, eds., 2004. The Impact of International Law on International
Cooperation: Theoretical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Week 13 (December 9): Collective Action and Bargaining Problems
Research Papers are due
Assigned Readings:
Tsai, Lily L. 2007. Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural
China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benvenisti, Eyal. 1996. Collective Action in the Utilization of Shared Freshwater: The Challenges of
International Water Resources Law. American Journal of International Law 90 (3): 384–415.
Alcock, Frank. 2002. Bargaining, Uncertainty, and Property Rights in Fisheries. World Politics 54 (4): 437–
461.
Recommended Readings:
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and Theory of Groups. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Ghate, R., N. Jodha, P. Mukhopadhyay. 2008. Promise, Trust, and Evolution: Managing the Commons of
South Asia.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ostrom, Elinor, Roy Gardner, and James Walker. 1992. Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-
Governance is Possible. American Political Science Review 86 (2): 404–417.
Week 14 (December 14): Research Paper Presentations