A NEW TYPE OF RESOURCE CURSE? THE EFFECT OF NATURAL RESOURCE PIPELINES ON THE LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY, REGIME STABILITY, AND DEVELOPMENT By RUCHAN KAYA A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2014 © 2014 Ruchan Kaya To my beloved Family ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am sincerely thankful for the supervision and inspiration I have received from my adviser and mentor Michael Bernhard. His demonstration of great scholarship and mentorship as well as provision of funding, encouragement, and motivation have been vital from very early stages to until finishing my dissertation. I am also grateful to my committee members: Benjamin Smith, Bryon Moraski, and Conor O’Dwyer framed my perspective in understanding Comparative Politics through their exemplary scholarship and taught me to ask the right questions in developing my research. Badredine Arfi helped me go through the early stages of the Ph.D. and trained me to use a range of methodological tools. Ingrid Kleespies always offered a contrasting perspective and shaped my language skills. I thank Larry Dodd for always offering an ear for my research questions. A great number of institutions provided monetary and logistical support for this dissertation. I am thankful to be one of the recipients of the Alumni Graduate Fellowship at the University of Florida as well as the financial support from the Department of Political Science in the years after. Charles Vincent and Heidi Cole McLaughlin Scholarship made the last stages of the dissertation writing process much easier. ICPSR and IQRM Scholarships made it possible to acquire further methodological skills while blending with a more diverse research environment. I am particularly grateful to the people at the Tbilisi State University, Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, Ministry of Youth and Sport Affairs of Georgia, and Energy Studies Department at World Experience for Georgia for providing me their invaluable input about Georgia’s energy perspective. I would also like to thank Center for Islamic Studies (ISAM) in Istanbul for providing me a venue to finish writing my dissertation. 4 I also thank my department staff Sue Lawless-Yanchisin, Debbie Wallen, and Pat Root for completing endless number of tasks along the years. I am grateful to have friends like Ekrem Karakoc, Emrah Sahin, Betul Gokkir, and Manu Samnotra who have been my avid supporters through the Ph.D. and provided insightful input for my research making graduate school a better experience overall. I am thankful for all the emotional support I received from my families in Balikesir, Izmit, and Istanbul. Without my mom, dad, and sister’s confidence in me I would not be the person I am today. Finally, even with all the professional assistance from several individuals and institutions, it would not have been possible for me to go through this Ph.D. without my wife, Burcu Kanyilmaz Kaya. She shared all the financial and emotional discomforts with me all these years as well as bestowing her endless love and backing. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 11 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 17 History of Transit Pipelines and their Legal Framework .......................................... 19 Locating Transit Pipelines within Comparative Politics Literature ........................... 21 Diffusion of Regimes through Pipelines .................................................................. 30 A Note on the Differences between Oil and Natural Gas ........................................ 31 Structure of the Dissertation ................................................................................... 36 2 THEORIZING RESOURCE TRANSIT: THE EFFECT OF NATURAL RESOURCE PIPELINES ON THE LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY, REGIME STABILITY, AND DEVELOPMENT IN BELARUS AND GEORGIA ........................ 41 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 41 Framing the Hypotheses on Democracy, Regime Stability, and Development ....... 46 Choosing Belarus and Georgia in Assessing the Impact of Resource Pipelines on Transit Countries ............................................................................................ 51 Pipelines in Belarus and Georgia ............................................................................ 52 Brief Regime and Development Trajectories of Belarus and Georgia ..................... 55 Evaluating the Hypotheses ..................................................................................... 60 Resource Transit and Levels of Democracy ..................................................... 60 Belarus ....................................................................................................... 66 Georgia ...................................................................................................... 71 Regime Stability in Belarus and Georgia .......................................................... 75 Georgia ...................................................................................................... 79 Belarus ....................................................................................................... 86 Economic Development.................................................................................... 92 Belarus ....................................................................................................... 93 Georgia ...................................................................................................... 98 Human Development ...................................................................................... 103 Georgia .................................................................................................... 104 Belarus ..................................................................................................... 107 Summary .............................................................................................................. 109 3 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: INTRODUCING THE DATA SET .......................... 118 6 What is a Resource Transit Country? ................................................................... 118 Domestic, Cross-Border, International, and Transit Pipelines ............................... 122 Global Statistics of Pipelines and Transit Countries: The Sample ........................ 124 Pipeline Length and Transit Capacities................................................................. 131 Dependent Variables ............................................................................................ 137 Comparing Oil and Natural Gas Transit Countries with High Resource Income Countries, and the Rest of the World ................................................................. 140 4 THE EFFECT OF RESOURCE PIPELINES ON THE LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL STABILITY ................................................................................ 158 The Logic of Choosing the Main Independent Variables ...................................... 159 The Level of Democracy ....................................................................................... 163 Control Variables ............................................................................................ 163 Methods.......................................................................................................... 165 Results ........................................................................................................... 167 Robustness Checks ....................................................................................... 174 Models with the Polity Data ............................................................................ 176 Regime Stability .................................................................................................... 181 Control Variables ............................................................................................ 182 Methods.......................................................................................................... 183 Results ........................................................................................................... 185 Robustness Checks for Outliers and Influential Cases ................................... 190 Conclusion and Further Research ........................................................................ 195 5 TRANSIT PIPELINES, ECONOMIC GROWTH, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATES .................................................................................................................. 208 Economic Growth ................................................................................................. 208 Control Variables ............................................................................................ 209 Methods.........................................................................................................