Book rating: Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal. Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Successor States of the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) In Oil Is Not a Curse, the authors test their hypothesis about the causal mechanisms underlying the resource curse through congruence procedures, and conclude by making a trenchant argument: whoever owns and controls the mining sector influences the emergence of tax regimes that vary in their ability to constrain and enable the state. In other words, mineral-rich states are “cursed” not by their wealth but rather by the ownership structure they choose to manage their mineral wealth. The authors see the ownership structure of mineral resources as an intermediate cause of institutional weakness. The form of ownership structure adopted by a resource-rich country shapes the incentives for subsequent institutional development, influences the institutional outcome (particularly the tax regime) and therefore “the prospects for developing state capacity and achieving economic growth in the long term." (page 9). Basing their argument on two foundations, 1) absolute immunity to direct external interference in national decision-making, and 2) leaders' own conscience in formulating policies, the book challenges conventional wisdom on the resource curse by asserting that the structure of resource ownership functions as a determining variable that directs the pattern of resource management and its ultimate well-being in developing countries. This topic has its academic merits, but it is still not flawless. Contributions: A New Variable and a New Measurement One of the book's most significant contributions to scholarship is its discovery of... middle of paper... elites' perceptions of social expectations. The problem is that they ignore the gap between perceptions and actual facts. Political speeches contain more rhetoric than reality and therefore, at best, provide uncertain support for their argument and, at worst, provide a completely false impression. To summarize, Oil is Not a Curse provides an enlightening discussion on how to manage natural resources in order to make them a cure rather than a curse. While the basis for the hypothesis presented in the book is shaky, it is still an inspired break with traditional wisdom. The authors contribute to scholarly understanding by uncovering a predefined analytical anchor in the conventional literature whose recognition enables a new avenue in future research on the resource curse: the degree of variation and/or uniformity in resource ownership over time and space..