Book Review: Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal. Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) In the book Oil Is Not a Curse, the authors test their hypothesis about the underlying causal mechanisms to the resource curse through congruence procedures, and conclude by proposing a forward-thinking argument: who owns and controls the mining sector affects the emergence of tax regimes that vary in terms of their capacity to constrain and empower 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 consider the ownership structure of mineral resources as an intermediate cause of institutional weakness. The form of ownership structure adopted by a resource-rich country determines the incentives for further institution building, affects institutional outcomes (especially the tax regime), and thus "the prospects for building state capacity and achieving long-term economic growth. (p.9). Basing their argument on two grounds, 1) absolute immunity from direct outside interference in national decision-making, and 2) the leaders' own conscience when crafting their policies, the book challenges conventional wisdom on the matter. of resource curse by asserting that the ownership structure of resources functions as a determining variable that directs the pattern of resource management and its eventual well-being in developing countries. This argument certainly has its scientific merits, but is nevertheless not flawless.Contributions: A New Variable and a New MeasureOne of the book's most significant contributions to scholarship is its discovery of...... middle paper ...... Elite perceptions of societal expectations. The problem is that they ignore the gap between perceptions and actual facts. Political speeches contain more rhetoric than reality and, as a result, they provide flimsy support for their argument at best and, at worst, give a completely false impression. In summary, Oil is Not a Curse provides an enlightening discussion on how to manage natural resources to make them a cure rather than a curse. Although the basis of the hypothesis presented in the book is flimsy, it nevertheless constitutes an inspired departure from traditional wisdom. The authors contribute to scientific understanding by uncovering a default analytical anchor in the conventional literature, the recognition of which paves the way for a new avenue in future research on the resource curse: the degree of variation and/or d uniformity of resource ownership across time and space..