The recent resource curse literature suggests that oil promotes authoritarian regime stability. Yet the causal linkages underpinning the political resource curse remain less well understood. Using a case study of Azerbaijan, this article first examines how oil revenues benefited the existing...

This article discusses several mechanisms by which oil wealth has sustained authoritarian rule in Azerbaijan. While the prevailing focus on patronage spending and repression is undoubtedly accurate, it is nevertheless incomplete because it does not account for oil's adverse effects that can...

The article delineates the major national, regional and international level stakeholders in the westward Trans-Caspian transportation of Kazakh oil, supplemented with a discussion of the prospect of expansion of theTrans-Caspian/SouthCaucasus corridor in light of the presumably harmful effect of...

Despite the officially stated goal of economic diversification and the billions of petrodollars in government expenditure, Azerbaijan has made slow progress achieving non-oil growth and remains heavily dependent on oil revenues. Why have Azerbaijan's efforts to reduce dependence on energy export...

Azerbaijan's democratization attempts failed, not least because for those in power, control over the political process was essential in order to gain and maintain control over the country's petroleum riches. Organization of power along patrimonial lines defines the system that Azerbaijan's late...