Imagining the mineral nation: contested nation-building in Mongolia

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara L. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Resource Curse ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Dutch Disease ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Copper Gold ◽  
Investment Agreement ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Public Concerns

The development of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine, located in Mongolia's South Gobi province, promises to rebuild the nation after two decades of economic and social instabilities following the 1990 revolution. While the company promotes the mine as the teleological solution to Mongolia's development, the state and public remain ambivalent, as concerns about a resource curse and Dutch Disease loom. In this paper, I argue that Oyu Tolgoi remains contested due to tensions between corporate and state actors as well as public concerns about the potential negative political, economic, and environmental effects of mining. Debates over the Oyu Tolgoi investment agreement negotiations and the immediate repercussions of the agreement signing reveal how the dual teleologies of building mineral nations crystallize in the neologism “Mine-golia.” This paper begins to fill a gap in the literature on mineral nations which privileges the role of the state, leaving how corporations engage in nation-building underexamined.

Party plenum strengthens Xi’s grip on China

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Senior Leaders ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Political Economic

Subject The Communist Party's recent Fourth Plenum meeting. Significance The Communist Party concluded a five-day meeting of senior leaders on October 31. The meeting, called the ‘Fourth Plenum’, focused on institutional and intra-Party affairs. Press statements that followed were short on policy detail, but the meeting appears to have reaffirmed President Xi Jinping's efforts to place the Party and its ideology at the centre of China's political, economic and social life. Impacts Xi’s grip on the Party appears unassailable. There are no signs of Xi lining up a successor; he looks likely to remain leader for a third term. There are no indications that Beijing will compromise on US demands to reduce the role of the state in industry.

Economic rationalism in Canberra 25 years on?

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pusey
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Political Project

This article, based on an edited transcript of a speech at The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) conference in Melbourne in December 2016, summarises the criticisms of ‘economic rationalism’, cum neoliberalism, that emerged from the ‘economic rationalism debate’ in Australia of the early 1990s to the present. Economic rationalism reversed Australia’s historic nation-building legacy. Free market neoliberal doctrines have captured the central Canberra policy-making apparatus and radically reduced the coordinating role of the state in most areas of public policy. Economic ‘reform’ is seen primarily as a political project led by international and domestic corporate interest groupings and aimed at the transformation of Australia’s institutions. The neoliberal orthodoxy continues to distort the policy process as it has become functionally indispensable for the process of policy making and government, despite its failing intellectual legitimacy.

Statecraft on cement:The politics of land-based accumulation inErdoğan’s Turkey

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110440
Author(s):  
Melih Yeşilbağ
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Domestic Capital ◽  
Ideological Resources ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
New Generation

This article contributes to the literature on the role of the state in land-based accumulation by presenting an explanatory framework on the case of contemporary Turkey, a case marked by an unprecedented construction boom that carries the distinct mark of the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party). Land-based accumulation has constituted a defining aspect of the political economic setting of the AKP era. An investigation of the motivations behind this strategy reveals that it has been instrumental for the ruling party’s political agendas. Through land-based accumulation, the AKP has been able to cultivate a new generation of firms in the construction industry with connections to the party, consolidate its power among domestic capital and develop new mechanisms to finance party politics. Furthermore, symbolic and material manifestations of land-based accumulation have been abundantly used in the party’s propaganda machinery to provide ideological legitimation. Overall, the AKP’s authoritarian grip on power has been forged through the political-ideological resources provided by land-based accumulation. Contrary to the widespread narratives of weakening, passive or merely facilitating states, the case of Turkey brings to the fore an instance of boosting state agendas through land-based accumulation. My findings underline the need to combine capital-switch arguments with a Gramscian political conjunctural analysis for a fuller understanding of the role of the state in land-based accumulation, and point to the urban roots of neoliberal authoritarianism.

The Resource Boom in China’s Resource-Rich Provinces

Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-300
Author(s):  
Hong Yu ◽  
Yongnian Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Resource Curse ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
The State ◽  
Resource Exploitation ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Chinese Characteristics

State-owned enterprises’ unchecked resource exploitation and the Chinese state’s GDP-dominated mentality have played pivotal roles in causing and perpetuating social and environmental problems in the country’s resource-rich provinces. The authors propose a “resource curse theory with Chinese characteristics” to analyze the role of the state and the impacts of state-owned enterprises.

scholarly journals On Localism and the Persistent Power of the State

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 285-289
Author(s):  
Cinnamon P. Carlarne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Political Economic

On June 1, 2017, President Trump declared that the United States would “cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.” The United States’ de facto withdrawal from the Paris Agreement represented an important inflection point for conceptualizing the role of nonstate actors in addressing climate change. President Trump's announcement was met with an outpouring of resistance and widespread and concerted efforts to mobilize substate, nonprofit, and private actors to step into the void created by his announcement and to help keep the United States on track to pursue domestic and international commitments to address climate change despite federal recalcitrance. Within the leadership void created by the Trump Administration and amidst the increasingly extensive body of sub- and nonstate climate efforts, it is tempting to decenter the role of the state or to underestimate the persistent power of the state to shape the approach and effectiveness of nonstate actions. Failing to recognize that the state retains significant power in this field undermines efforts to understand the realities within which nonstate actors operate. This creates a set of heightened expectations for these actors that defies the reality of the political, economic, and social resources available to them and masks the challenges inherent in relying upon a fragmented, shifting, and differently accountable set of actors to effect pervasive change.

The Role of the State in Urban Development: The Case of Houston, Texas

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
J R Feagin
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
The State ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
Theoretical Insight ◽  
Insight Into

Theories dealing with the role of the state in cities vary considerably in emphasis, from traditional political matters to neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian theories accenting a broader political-economic context in analyzing the role of government in cities. This diversity of urban theories poses significant theoretical and analytical challenges, The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of government in Houston, the most extreme case of a major city which has been developed according to an accentuated ‘free market’ philosophy, in order (1) to provide empirical evidence on the complexity of the state role in supporting urban growth in the Houston metropolis; and (2) to provide additional theoretical insight into the role of the state in the city.

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