Natural resources and conflict: the crucial role of power mismatch and geographic asymmetries

Natural resource rents are often equated with political turmoil and fighting. While one can easily find examples where there has been such a link (see e.g. the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Chad, Nigeria or Iraq), one can as easily pick examples of both democracies (e.g. Norway) or nondemocracies (e.g. Saudi Arabia) where resource wealth has not been associated with political instability. As argued below, whether the spoils of nature give birth to the horror of war depends on a series of geographical and political factors, namely asymmetries and mismatches that are not compensated by appropriate policies.