Blowout
by Rachel Maddow
View on GoodreadsMaddow's argument that the oil and gas industry — by its nature — corrupts politics and weakens democracy wherever it operates, told through interlocking stories from Oklahoma earthquakes to Russian kleptocracy.
Core ideas
- Extractive industry economics produce political capture as a feature, not a bug — the rents are large, location-specific, and require state cooperation.
- Russia is presented as the extreme case: a petrostate that has hollowed out its institutions in service of the resource and now exports that corruption.
- The American case is on the same continuum — fracking-belt politics, ExxonMobil's diplomacy, the Tillerson appointment — just earlier on the curve.
Published2019
Pages400
ISBN9780525575498
ReadDec 2022
