Varieties of Authoritarianism Matter: Natural Resources and Economic Growth in Competitive and Hegemonic Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

A broad literature suggests that political regimes matter for the growth effect of natural resources. However, while several studies have concentrated on the difference between democracies and autocracies in this respect, an important topic overlooked so far is the differences between varieties of authoritarian regimes. This study uses the political variation across sub-national regions of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin to compare hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes in terms of the effect natural resource abundance has on growth in the short run. We find that competitive authoritarian regimes underperform hegemonic ones and link this effect to higher intensity of rent-seeking and fights over rent in competitive regimes due to the shorter time horizon of the elites.

Keywords: Resource Curse, Subnational Political Regimes, Authoritarianism, Russian Regions

JEL Classification: D72, P26, P28, Q38