1 The Political Economy of Extracting Resource Wealth: Natural Resource Sector Organization and Ownership

Competition over rents, no matter how those rents are derived, is a central fact of any political economic system. In resource-dependent developing countries, rents can be very large, making the extractive industries sector itself a key locus of political contestation. Once elites have access to a share of the resource rents, they can be expected to pursue their own objectives in deciding how to distribute those rents. Time horizons complicate the picture: governments are keen to maximize short-term rents in order to be able to distribute those rents in the near term, to secure political support, and sometimes to provide private goods to elites. Yet it is also in the government‘s interest to maximize long-terms rents and, by investing in public infrastructure and servic