Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Constitutions As Counter-Curses: Revenue Allocation And The Resource Curse, Tom Brower

Journal of Law and Policy

The resource curse—the paradoxical relationship between natural resource abundances and poorer economic growth, weaker political institutions, and higher levels of conflict—remains one of the most confounding issues in international development. Although the literature has proffered a plethora of institutional solutions to the resource curse, they have been vexed by a common theme: their unsuccessful implementation in developing countries without the proper institutional foundations that act as a bulwark against policy reversal and the perpetuation of rent-seeking behavior. This Article introduces constitutionally protected natural resource revenue allocation institutions as a superior mechanism for a state to allocate rents from natural resources. …