ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses all major studies which look into potential drivers of energy policy choices. The field of energy studies is dominated by engineers, economists, and only partly, by political scientists. The latter are largely interested in energy security, energy and conflict, energy and resource curse, and only marginally in energy policy, which has been treated as a given for other social, political or economic phenomena. Nationalization is different from control structures in the sense that the former is just one instance in time whereas the latter is the product of an economic policy. It explores to bring together the identified explanations into a unitary analytical framework of upstream sector policies in oil producing countries worldwide. The executive and the state leader are free or less so to pursue their preferred policy in the upstream sector depending on two main domestic constraints: the level of political constraints and the extent of the country's dependence on oil revenues.
