Local Politics and the Resource Curse: Natural Resources, Interest Heterogeneity and Protest in Bolivia

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-403
Author(s):  
Anaïd Flesken ◽  
Annegret Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Resource ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Political Views

AbstractStudies of public contentious action in response to mineral resource extraction have rarely employed quantitative methods. In a highly disaggregated statistical analysis we examine local protest dynamics in Bolivia and argue for a political conditioning of the so-called resource curse. We find that mineral gas resources spark disputes over both extraction and rent redistribution at the local level, and that this relationship is especially pronounced where the population has highly heterogenous political values and interests. In contrast, where the population is relatively united in their political views, significantly fewer protests occur.

Resource Extraction and Inclusive Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Bebbington ◽  
Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai ◽  
Denise Humphreys Bebbington ◽  
Marja Hinfelaar ◽  
Cynthia A. Sanborn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
Resource Governance ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Cross Country

This chapter develops a conceptual framework for understanding the politics of extractive industry governance. Building from the work of Karl, Ross, Watts, and others, and their efforts to understand the political drivers and consequences of the resource curse, the chapter proposes an approach that also engages with political settlements theory, addressing the political implications of the materiality of natural resources and the politics of ideas surrounding resource governance. The chapter then introduces a programme of cross-country, comparative research designed to address the relationships among political settlements, extractive industry, and patterns of development; describes the questions that guided this research; and presents the methods used.

Mining the state : the subnational consequences of natural resource extraction on citizen engagement

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Miller
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Local Economic Development ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The State ◽  
Resource Extraction

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Scholars link natural resource wealth to a host of anti-democratic consequences. The bulk of this literature focuses on the consequences of oil revenues, which have the power to dramatically transform a country. However, mining can have a similar effect subnationally. At the local level, mining dominates an economy. The mining industry's economic power in areas of weak local governance can produce a competing governing entity. This effect is most pronounced within the realm of public goods provision. Given mining's ability to become a competing state-like entity, this dissertation asks how resource extraction influences citizen interactions with the state. Focusing specifically on the Republic of South Africa, I find that mining leads to increases in political trust, but also results in increases in support for authoritarian service providers. In addition, I find that mining reduces citizen voice, by both reducing the count of protests and decreasing voter turnout. These findings contribute to the resource curse literature by demonstrating that mining can promote a political resource curse while also addressing issues of local economic development.

Hijacking the Imagination: How to Tell the Story of the Niger Delta

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-138
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wenzel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Resource Conflicts ◽  
Ben Okri ◽  
Photo Essay ◽  
Petroleum Extraction

This chapter examines texts about the Niger Delta in several genres (Ogaga Ifowodo’s poem The Oil Lamp; fiction by Uwem Akpan, Helon Habila, and Ben Okri; the photo-essay anthology Curse of the Black Gold; Sandy Cioffi’s film Sweet Crude). Juxtaposing political ecology’s analysis of natural resource conflicts with Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, the chapter argues that the relationships among petroleum extraction, literary production, and national imagining in Nigeria are better described as un-imagining, a corollary of underdevelopment as a transitive process of unmaking. Postcolonial citizenship entails a struggle over key questions: What is the state for? To whom do natural resources belong? Oil hijacks the imagination, promising wealth without work, progress without the passage of time. This dynamic manifests as petro-magic-realism, a literary variant of the resource curse hypothesis that blames the ills of resource extraction on the substance rather than social relations. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 galvanized world attention on the Nigerian petro-state; the subsequent explosion of violence in the Niger Delta can be read as a perverse realization of some of his demands for ethnic autonomy and resource control.

The Explosive Combination of Inefficient Local Bureaucracies and Mining Production: Evidence from Localized Societal Protests in Peru

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (03) ◽  
pp. 118-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo F. Ponce ◽  
Cynthia McClintock
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
Significant Independent Variable ◽  
Independent Variable

AbstractAlthough numerous scholars have analyzed the effects of natural resource extraction at the national level, few have explored it systematically at the local level. Focusing on Peru, where both mining production and local social protests have greatly increased in recent years and where a new tax has required mining companies to transfer revenue to subnational governments, this study explores the resource curse at the local level. In particular, why do protests arise mostly in the areas of natural resource extraction? Employing subnational data for Peru for the period 2004–9 and LAPOP survey data from 2010, the research confirms previous findings that social conflict is provoked by both the negative externalities of mining and the revenues from the new tax. The article further demonstrates that local bureaucratic capacity is a significant independent variable. Greater subnational bureaucratic capacity can ameliorate the pernicious societal effects of a local resource curse.

Popular Resource Sovereignty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leif Wenar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The People ◽  
Rich Countries

Article 1 of both of the major human rights covenants declares that the people of each country “shall freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources.” This chapter considers what conditions would have to hold for the people of a country to exercise this right—and why public accountability over natural resources is the only realistic solution to the “resource curse,” which makes resource-rich countries more prone to authoritarianism, civil conflict, and large-scale corruption. It also discusses why cosmopolitans, who have often been highly critical of prerogatives of state sovereignty, have good reason to endorse popular sovereignty over natural resources. Those who hope for more cosmopolitan institutions should see strengthening popular resource sovereignty as the most responsible path to achieving their own goals.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon W. Moses ◽  
Bjørn Letnes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Dutch Disease ◽  
Political Conditions

There is broad recognition that Norway manages its natural resources successfully. Policymakers are flocking to Norway to try to learn the lessons provided by the Norwegian model. This book describes the main challenges facing policymakers in resource-rich states (e.g., Dutch Disease, Resource Curse, Paradox of Plenty), and the sort of institutional solutions and policies that are available to them. We explain why the Norwegian authorities chose the solutions they did, and how these choices have changed over the years, in response to changing market and political conditions. The result is a book that offers insight and understanding as to why the country made the choices it did, rather than providing a specific model for export.

The Banning of Samoa’s Repatriated Mau Songs

2018 ◽  
pp. 490-502
Author(s):  
Richard Moyle
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Traditional Leadership ◽  
Year 2000

The Samoan Mau nationalistic movement of the 1920s, which led eventually to Independence in 1962, was characterized by group songs many of which were fervent in their support for traditional leadership and scathing in their condemnation of the then New Zealand administration. In the year 2000 copies of Mau songs recorded some fifty years earlier were among musical items repatriated to Samoa to public acclaim and national radio playback, but within a few weeks they were banned from further broadcast. The ban acknowledged singing as a socially powerful tool for local politics, since the broadcasts transformed songs as cultural artifacts to singing as social assertion, returning into the public arena a range of political views that many Samoans had preferred to keep private.

scholarly journals Mineral Resource Depletion Assessment: Alternatives, Problems, Results

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 862
Author(s):  
Tatiana Ponomarenko ◽  
Marina Nevskaya ◽  
Izabela Jonek-Kowalska
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Resource ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Mining Company ◽  
Social Wellbeing ◽  
Renewable Natural Resources ◽  
Tin Deposit ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Local Levels

The depletion of non-renewable natural resources (primarily mineral and energy resources) and its assessment is a problem that is analyzed based on the concept of sustainable development. Mineral resource depletion assessment is particularly important for resource-based economies. It provides for assessing the impact of mineral asset disposal that results from the suspension or termination of operations conducted by a mining company due to insurmountable circumstances. The results of such an event will be manifested at the national, regional, and local levels and felt by mining companies, suppliers, workers, the population of the territory, and other stakeholders. The study clarifies the attributes and essence of mineral resource depletion, analyzes the advantages and limitations of the existing tools for assessing mineral resource depletion, identifies depletion factors, describes a methodology for assessing mineral resource depletion, and contains a case study of a tin deposit. The results of the study contribute to the development of the theory on the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. They provide for assessing losses to social wellbeing that can be caused by stopping the use of profitable mineral reserves.

scholarly journals Improving Relations between a State and a Business Enterprise in the Context of Counteracting Adverse Effects of the Resource Curse

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1067
Author(s):  
Marek Szturo ◽  
Bogdan Włodarczyk ◽  
Alberto Burchi ◽  
Ireneusz Miciuła ◽  
Karolina Szturo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Resource Sharing ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Strategic Resources ◽  
Key Resources

Natural resources play a significant role in the development of the global economy. This refers, in particular, to strategic fuel and mineral resources. Due to the limited supply of natural resources and the lack of substitutes for most of the key resources in the world, the competition for the access to strategic resources is a feature of the global economy. It would seem that the countries which are rich in resources, because of this huge demand, enjoy spectacular economic prosperity. However, the results of empirical studies have demonstrated what is known as the ‘resource curse’. This article concentrates on the characteristics of the paradox of plenty, and in particular on the possibilities of preventing this phenomenon. The aim of this article is to identify the measures of economic policy with which to counteract the resource curse, based on the relationship between the state and the extraction business. Upon the critical analysis of the relevant literature, we concluded that the state’s economic policy, implemented in cooperation with the extraction business, is increasingly important for the prevention of the resource curse. In the context of the resource curse, the optimal and most consensual instrument, in comparison with other resource sharing agreements, is a production sharing agreement (PSA), which should also be adjusted to the current local economic conditions in a given country.

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