Gabon:Cameroon::Oman:Yemen.  Oil.<p>No, really, the author is saying nothing.  Wealth is just one part of a society.  Effective government is another part.  They are both effects of other causes.  And they themselves feed back.  It's not hard to point out the essentially gangster-like attributes of almost any government.  The USA seizes its citizens' property and kills people all across the world.  Oddly, since it steals so much more from a wealthier population, the theft isn't as painful.  It requires infrastructure to efficiently transfer taxes up and back down to government parasites, rather than have the parasites take it by hand, as in Cameroon.  So people rarely think of the USA as a gangster demanding protection money.<p>This guy is just another reductionist sociologist trying to come up with that one...one...one...reason why an extremely complicated situation is perpetually botched.