Research
Peer-reviewed journals
Breaking the carbon lock-in : Identifying pathways for Malaysia towards a low-carbon future. Schuch, E., Apergi, M., Yik, D., Chow, K., Eicke, L., Goldthau, A., Kurniawan, J. H., Lima-de-oliveira, R., Gen, Z., & Weko, S. (2024). Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 202(March 2024), 123331.
An energy justice index for the energy transition in the global South. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Volume 192, March 2024, 114238 (Maria Apergi, Laima Eicke, Andreas Goldthau, Mustafa Hashem, Sebastián Huneeus, Renato Lima de Oliveira, Maureen Otieno, Esther Schuch, Konstantin Veit. ).
Political Support for Sale: Cabinet Appointments and Public Expenditures in Brazil. Braz. political sci. rev. [online]. 2024, vol. 18, n. 1 (Mauerberg Jr., Arnaldo and Oliveira, Renato Lima de and Guerreiro, Julia. ).
"The impact of gamification on entrepreneurial Intention in a Brazilian technical business school." Brazilian Administration Review, (2023) 20(1), e210033. (by Melo, F. L. N. B. de, Soares, A. M. J., Sampaio, L. M. B., & Oliveira, R. L.- de-).
"Corruption and local content development: Assessing the impact of the Petrobras’ scandal on recent policy changes in Brazil" The Extractive Industries and Societies (2019).
“Fueling development? Assessing the Impact of Oil and Soybean Wealth on Municipalities in Brazil” (with Martin Liby Alonso), The Extractive Industries and Societies. 4 (2017) 576–585.
“Can Politicians Police Themselves? Natural Experimental Evidence from Brazil’s Audit Courts” (with F. Daniel Hidalgo and Julio Canello), Comparative Political Studies, March 3, 2016 0010414015626436). Recipient of the "James Caporaso Best Paper" award for the best paper to appear in CPS in 2016.
“Corrupção Burocrática e Empreendedorismo: Uma Análise Empírica dos Estados Brasileiros.” (Bureaucratic Corruption and Entrepreneurship: An Empirical Analysis of Brazilian States) (with Felipe de Melo and Luciano Sampaio). Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Management), v. 19, n. 3, art. 5, pp. 374-397. Rio de Janeiro, 2015.
Book chapters, essays and policy papers
"Competitive Neutrality in the Malaysian Power Sector: Removing Barriers for a Greener and More Innovative Energy Industry." Brief IDEAS No. 39, 2023.
Hermann, J., Apergi, M., Eicke, L., Goldthau, A., Kurniawan, J., Lima-de-Oliveira, R., Schuch, E., Weko, S. (2022): Unlocking a Low-Carbon Future for Malaysia. - IASS Policy Brief, 2022, 5.
“The future of Malaysia’s energy mix” with Mathias Varming, Policy Ideas, n. 64, 10/2020. Kuala Lumpur: IDEAS.
“OPEC at 60: A powerful past, a doubtful future” in Strategic Review (Global Perspectives), Jul 9, 2020.
“Resource-Led Industrial Development in the Oil and Gas Global Value Chain: The Case of Brazil” in Innovation in Brazil: Advancing Development in the 21st Century, Elisabeth B. Reynolds, Ben Ross Schneider, and Ezequiel Zylberberg (eds), Routledge, 2019.
“Left Government, Business Politics, And the Revival of Industrial Policy In Brazil” with Mansueto Almeida and Ben Ross Schneider in Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics, Barry Ames (ed), Routledge, 2019.
“Powering the future: Malaysia’s energy policy challenges” Policy Ideas, n. 55, 11/2018. Kuala Lumpur: IDEAS.
“Construindo indústria petroleira por meio de grupos nacionais - casos do Brasil e México” in Elites empresariais estado e mercado na América Latina, F. Cimini, J.V.B. Cabria, and R.R. Marques da Silva (eds), 173-196. Belo Horizonte: Face/UFMG, 2018.
"Elite Contestation and Mass Participation in Brazilian Legislative Elections, 1945-2014” with F. Daniel Hidalgo in New Order and Progress: Development and Democracy in Brazil, Ben Ross Schneider (ed), Oxford University Press, 2016).
“Government and Politics” in “Brazil” (Latin America in Focus Series), Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta and Eduardo F. Coutinho (eds.),. Santa Barbara (CA): ABC-CLIO, 2016.
“Política industrial e empresas estatais no Brasil: BNDES e Petrobras,” with Mansueto Almeida and Ben Ross Schneider in Capacidades Estatais e Democracia, Alexandre Gomide and Roberto Pires (eds), 323-347. Brasília: IPEA, 2014.
“Lincoln Gordon e o Golpe” in Na Trilha do Golpe, Tulio Velho Barreto & Laurindo Ferreira (eds). Recife: Editora Massangana (FUNDAJ), 2004. ISBN – 978.85.70194.17-6.
Book reviews
Lima-de-Oliveira, R. (2021). Decadent Developmentalism: The Political Economy of Democratic Brazil. By Matthew M. Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 340p. $99.99 cloth. Perspectives on Politics, 19(4), 1368-1369. doi:10.1017/S1537592721002255
Lima-de-Oliveira, R. (2022). Kathryn Hochstetler, Political Economies of Energy Transition: Wind and Solar Power in Brazil and South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Figures, tables, abbreviations, bibliography, index, 277 pp.; hardcover $99, ebook $80. Latin American Politics and Society, 64(3), 164-167. doi:10.1017/lap.2022.17
Book project
The Politics of Unconventional Oil: Industrial and Technology Policy in Brazil, Malaysia, and Mexico
My doctoral thesis, “The Politics of Unconventional Oil: Industrial and Technology Policy in Brazil, Malaysia, and Mexico” is a book project that theorizes the political dynamics of high-cost oil production and tests the theory’s predictions by exploring the political and economic effects of the oil industry in those countries. I establish the importance of geological factors for understanding oil production’s political consequences because geology determines the amount of rents each barrel generates (high for conventional oil, low for unconventional sources) and the demand for capital goods, skilled labor and technology (which are higher for unconventionals).
My research design compares countries that have similar levels of institutional development and GDP per capita but differ in their geological endowments, employing a structured comparison with within-case process-tracing. While Brazil and Malaysia are rich in harder and costlier to extract offshore oil, Mexico has historically had abundant low-cost reservoirs with geological characteristics similar to Middle Eastern fields (naturally fractured reservoirs). I use this variance to study how different sources of oil lead to varying outcomes with respect to technology development, manufacturing output, and distributive policies. In Brazil and Malaysia, the higher cost of extraction of their resources stimulated a greater degree of economic participation of the local supply chain and also encouraged Petrobras and Petronas to invest in building an innovation ecosystem to train workers and scientists. Policymakers in Brazil used this industrial demand for a strong local content policy designed to promote the domestic participation in labor-abundant activities, such as shipbuilding, and for party coalition-building, fueled, in part, with bribes from suppliers. Malaysian authorities targeted redistribution to the indigenous ethnic groups (bumiputera) through preferential procurement policies and scholarships from Petronas. Governments in both countries used oil wealth to fund R&D and training of workers aimed at reducing production costs and increasing the technical capacity to tap more resources, while also serving other political goals. They also adopted market institutions in the natural resource sector more open to international partnerships and private investments; and both Petrobras and Petronas used their home-built capabilities to expand overseas and increase reserve levels.
In contrast, in Mexico the oil sector has served almost exclusively as a provider of fiscal resources. As my findings show, during Mexico’s oil boom, Mexican policymakers purposefully neglected investments in R&D and development of a supply chain in order to maximize short-term rents shared by a small rent-seeking coalition of politicians and members of the Pemex workers’ union. This situation is changing fast as conventional oil is depleting and the Mexican government is implementing an ambitious energy reform to attract new investments, increase the efficiency of its oil company, boost R&D investment and maximize local purchases, the latter due to pressures from business associations and lawmakers interested in securing contracts from future unconventional production.
The conventional view of the oil industry in political science and economic development treats extractive industries as cases of enclave development, with no connection to the rest of the economy of the country, and serving only as a source of (easy) rents. In contrast, I show the conditions under which natural resources can lead to technological contributions (“Schumpeterian rents”) and institutional changes such as the growth of policies that mandate backward linkages through local content requirements. In the dissertation I go into greater detail about how oil firms react to industrial policies in oil and gas by combining strategies of voice (developing suppliers) and exit (paying fines and reducing investments).
My research draws from extensive fieldwork and data collection, triangulating different sources of evidence from all three countries, including participant observation at the Mexican ministry of energy (Sener), elite interviews, quantitative analyses of contracts and oil field data, archival research, and computer-assisted text analysis of presidential speeches.
In a related project with the MIT Industrial Performance Center (IPC) and Senai, I have analyzed the development of Brazil’s oil and gas supply chain and the role of R&D and local content policies, using a global value chain (GVC) approach. A working paper from this project is available here.
