Protesting Extraction in Resource-Poor States: Evidence from Tunisia

• In Event: Beyond the Resource Curse: The Politics of Extraction in MENA and Latin America

Abstract

How does resource extraction shape subnational patterns of protest in resource-poor states? Existing scholarship on resource wealth and contention draws most of its theoretical insights from analyses of resource-rich states, where extractive industries can make up 30% or more of GDP. Yet many countries with relatively small mineral and energy industries have seen popular protest movements spring up around these industries. In Tunisia, where resource rents have amounted on average to less than 5% of GDP since 1990, sustained protest movements have nonetheless developed surrounding two extractive industries: phosphate mining and petrol extraction.
When resources are abundant enough to spur investment and extraction, yet revenues are inadequate to support an entire population through a system of rent distribution, citizens may be even more prone to contention over questions of how resource rents are used and distributed. We argue that the distributive politics of scarce resource rents in overall low-resource countries may drive the emergence of strong resource regionalist movements: protests driven by the conviction that citizens of the geographic regions where resources are mined or pumped deserve a greater share of their revenue.
We pursue a multi-method, sub-nationally comparative approach to theorizing resource regionalist protests in Tunisia. First, we conduct qualitative comparisons of three resource regionalist movements active in post-revolutionary Tunisia, based on original interview data and newspaper coverage. Despite theoretically relevant variation in the commodity involved (petrol vs. phosphates), the ownership of extractive enterprises (public vs. private), and in the historical duration of resource, we find important commonalities in these three movements, including the construction of demands, the main participants, the organizational features, as well as tactical strategies. Next, we use a national protest event database to compare extraction-adjacent protests with protests taking place in other regions, highlighting again the unique character of resource regionalist protests compared with those taking place in other regions, and targeting other industries.

Authors

• Dina Bishara, Cornell University

• Chantal Berman, Georgetown University