Journal of Arabian Studies: The “Resource Curse” in the Persian Gulf
To cite this publication: Mehran Kamrava, guest ed., “The ‘Resource Curse’ in the Persian Gulf,” CIRS Special Issue of Journal of Arabian Studies 8.S1 (September 2018).
The debate on whether resource abundance in general, and resource dependence in particular, is a curse or a blessing is an old one. Paradoxically, despite a proliferation of studies on rentierism in the last two decades or so, the specific notion of a “resource curse” has seldom been studied systematically in relation to the Persian Gulf. The articles in this special issue address this gap, looking specifically at the historical causes and genesis of the phenomenon and its consequences in a variety of areas, including human development, infrastructural growth, clientelism, state-building and institutional evolution, and societal and gender relations.