Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia
  • Cited by 145
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2009
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511510359
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511510359
Series:
Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions
Subjects:
Area Studies, Asian Studies, Political Economy, South-East Asian Government, Politics and Policy, Politics and International Relations, Comparative Politics
Information

Book description

Scholars have long studied how institutions emerge and become stable. But why do institutions sometimes break down? In this book, Michael L. Ross explores the breakdown of the institutions that govern natural resource exports in developing states. He shows that these institutions often break down when states receive positive trade shocks - unanticipated windfalls. Drawing on the theory of rent-seeking, he suggests that these institutions succumb to a problem he calls 'rent-seizing' - the predatory behavior of politicians who seek to supply rent to others, and who purposefully dismantle institutions that restrain them. Using case studies of timber booms in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, he shows how windfalls tend to trigger rent-seizing activities that may have disastrous consequences for state institutions, and for the government of natural resources. More generally, he shows how institutions can collapse when they have become endogenous to any rent-seeking process.

Reviews

‘… this book is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in improving his understanding of the nexus between politics and the economics of natural resources, including, but not restricted to, forests. For that matter, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the economic development of countries whose economics are based substantially on exports of natural resources.’

David N. Laband - School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University, USA

‘This book provides an excellent and original analysis of the pressing issue of state resource mismanagement.’

Raymond Bryant - King’s College London

' … strongly recommended to anyone interested in Asian forests, natural resources management or governance problems in developing countries.'

Source: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania

‘This book offers a clear understanding of how natural-resource management in developing countries cannot be managed solely on a political basis, but must involve responsible and ethical foresters.’

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.