There is much more to the oil curse than just big states and apathetic
citizens. Oil states are not merely big—they are heavily centralized too,
since oil wealth accrues to the central state. They are usually also intensely
policed, since there is plenty of money to lavish on a huge and
active state-security apparatus. They are profoundly corrupt, because
the money pours into central-state coffers as rents, and it is really “nobody’s
money” (certainly no one’s tax money), so it is—in a warped
normative sense—“free” for the taking. In these systems, the state is
large, centralized, and repressive.