"If political rulers' first struggle is gaining power, strategically securing the means to accrue and retain that power is a close-run second. For rulers whose territories are blessed with extractive resources, such as petroleum, metals, minerals, and other precious commodities, converting...

Among scholars who focus on the politics of natural resources, conventional wisdom asserts that resource-scarce states have the strongest interest in securing control over resources. Counterintuitively, however, in Perils of Plenty, Jonathan N. Markowitz finds that the opposite is true. In...