Iraq: Private ownership of oil and the quest for democracy revisited

Razzak, Weshah (2019): Iraq: Private ownership of oil and the quest for democracy revisited.

Abstract

In Razzak (2006), I argued that the state-ownership and the state-management of oil (on behalf of the Iraqi people) is not conducive to democracy and economic development. Iraqis have had dictators for decades. They were only able to maintain power by controlling the oil. The events of 2019 uprising confirmed that. I also argued that it could impoverish the average Iraqi citizen. This has become clear to everyone now. The statistics demonstrate that the average Iraqi is poor. The new political establishment has failed to develop the economy and squandered Iraq’s oil wealth. In 2006, I proposed a change to the Iraqi constitution regarding oil and provided a strategy of a gradual transfer oil wealth to the Iraqi people. In this paper, I revise my idea based on the new information that became available from the recent uprising of the Iraqi people in 2019, and argue for an immediate transfer of oil wealth to the Iraqi people.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Oil, private ownership, democracy,development
• Subjects: P - Economic Systems > P1 - Capitalist Systems > P14 - Property Rights; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q3 - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation > Q32 - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q4 - Energy > Q43 - Energy and the Macroeconomy; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q4 - Energy > Q48 - Government Policy

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