The central bureaucracy’s need to control oil rent strengthens and reinforces
the role of budgetary institutions within politics and administration. Budget
institutions provide the government with an inordinate degree of discretion to allocate
the budget, a capacity that supports the State’s political legitimation and helps to
overcome economic turmoil. Paradoxically, oil produces a policy curse that reinforces
the State’s socio-political embeddedness at the expense of its economic leverage.
Thus, undermining the incentives for public officials to tax and deliver expenditure
quality, thereby deepening the State’s detachment from normal economic behaviour.