WAOW Launches Research Unit
WAOW has launched a research unit to systematically examine the international political economy of African oil. According to Dr. Robert Tynes of Bard College, who is co-coordinating the research, “the focus is on how the market is shaped, steered, and/or commandeered by foreign and domestic players”.
Approaches:
We approach the problem from three angles. First, through social network analysis we are mapping the connections forming and formed between oil companies and states, states and states, and companies and companies. The goal is to visualize the political economy and answer several basic questions: Which oil companies hold a dominant position in the African oil market? Which African states appear to have the greatest control over their own resources? Is the African oil market highly centralized, captured by a few key players? Or, is the market decentralized, with multiple companies and/or states maintaining comparable stakes in the market?
Dr. Vandy Kanyako with Research Coordinator, Dr. Robert Tynes
Our second approach involves the construction of a database of all the companies and states engaged in the African oil market, and their role—exploration, extraction, refining. The database includes numerous state-based, political variables, such as: level of democracy, level of education, infant mortality rates, civil society participation as watchdog, membership in multinational transparency institutions, and measures for rule of law, transparency and corruption. These variables are used to reveal potential correlations between economic activities in an African state and political outcomes.
Third, we are also creating narratives for each of the oil companies and African states. These are detailed descriptions that hone in on specific dynamics of the industry—What is the history of oil in the state? How has the company grown in, or receded from, the African oil market? What type of contractual agreements does the state or company have? Taken together, our three-fold approach should provide a multi-dimensional model of the international political economy of African oil, one that has yet to be constructed.
