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

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Political scientists have examined the role of resource wealth in shaping a range of political outcomes, including regime type, institutional quality, and conflict onset. The "rentier state" and "resource curse" paradigms have been particularly influential in the study of the Global South. Yet by focusing predominantly on oil and gas (to the detriment of non-hydrocarbon mineral industries) and by considering minerals' impacts on politics mainly in light of their revenues and rentability, these paradigms fall short of explaining the critical and varied contemporary politics of resource extraction.


This panel asks: what factors explain the extent to which states in the 21st century promote or constrain natural resource extraction? How are extractive prerogatives balanced against other governance commitments, including redistribution and indigenous rights? What factors configure the relationship between states, firms, and populations adjacent to sites of mineral extraction? And how does extraction shape the ways in which citizens mobilize to achieve economic and social rights?


Four papers address these questions, drawing on an array of contemporary cases and multiple forms of qualitative and quantitative data. Simmons studies the intersection between resource extraction and indigenous autonomy commitments during the Morales administration in Bolivia, highlighting constraints on the state’s ability to pursue new ideals of plurinationalism and redistribution posed by the legacy of resource reliance. Moises Arce studies corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, using unique survey and qualitative evidence from the Quellaveco mine in Peru to examine the conditions conducive to CSR settlements and the ways in which these initiatives shape popular perceptions of mining. Spalding examines efforts to ban or constrain mining across four Latin American countries, identifying how the nature of state institutions, elite networks, and anti-mining coalitions can jointly determine trajectories of mining policy and regulation. Berman and Bishara compare resource-regionalist movements targeting the phosphate and petrol industries in post-revolutionary Tunisia, analyzing how extractive industries in an overall resource-poor environment produce particular forms of social contention.


The panel’s comparative focus between Latin America and the Middle East highlights structural and historical similarities between the two regions, laying groundwork for a fruitful comparative research agenda. Our panelists include faculty at multiple academic ranks and an array of institutions, both public and private.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Legacies of Extraction: Natural Resources and Governance in Bolivia - Erica S. Simmons, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Protesting Extraction in Resource-Poor States: Evidence from Tunisia - Dina Bishara, Cornell University; Chantal Berman, Georgetown University

• Mining Policy Variation: Controlled Comparison of Four Latin American Cases - Rose J. Spalding, DePaul University

• Negotiated Settlements over Mining - Moises Arce, Tulane University

• Green Transition v. the Environment: The Race for Lithium in Latin America - Sarah M. Brooks, Ohio State University; Santiago Thomas Lacroix Eussler, Ohio State University; Erik Voeten, Georgetown University

Chair

• Thea Riofrancos Providence College

Discussants

• Darin Christensen UCLA

• Thea Riofrancos Providence College