Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Oil, the state, and war fits well within the ongoing scholarly conversations, such as that between Rosemary A. Kelanic and Robert Vitalis, about the role that oil plays in (energy) security decision-making. Emma Ashford reasons that energy security concerns have overshadowed the study of the relationship between domestic oil production and foreign policy behaviour. Therefore, she looks at the oil producers' side of the story, as Ibrahim AlMuhanna does in his book Oil leaders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022; reviewed in International Affairs 99: 1, January 2023). For simplicity, Ashford has chosen oil to indicate hydrocarbon production, notably oil and gas. The book features 48 large and small oil-producing countries, representing all continents. While there is a growing consensus among scholars that petrostates are more likely to start wars, there has been no sustained effort to explain why this would be the case. For Ashford, previous research on the topic has overlooked the definitional questions, and the conclusions have been contradictory. Thus, the author offers a definition of a petrostate, synonymous with an oil-rich state, and also suggests a conceptual division into three types and one subtype. First, Ashford defines ‘oil-dependent’ states as countries where resource production dominates the economy, and the oil rents are greater than 10 per cent of gross domestic product. Second, the author looks at ‘oil-wealthy states’, whose economies are not necessarily dominated by resource production but that still receive substantial wealth from it, achieving revenue of more than $1,000 per capita. The third and last type, ‘super-producer states’, refers to countries whose oil production is greater than 2 per cent of the global oil supply. Within super-producers, Ashford also identifies ‘super-exporter states’, which produce more than they consume. These definitions allow for countries to belong to more than one group. Moreover, with this framework, Ashford demonstrates that there is more to the subject than merely the question of whether oil production influences foreign policy.
Source: International Affairs
DOI: 10.1093/ia/iiad143
Author: Johanne Marie Skov
Institution: Lancaster University
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4382940170