Political settlements and the governance of extractive industry: A comparative analysis of the longue durée in Africa and Latin America
Loading...
Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This paper synthesises findings from research in Bolivia, Ghana, Peru and Zambia to
address the following three questions: 1) How does the nature of political settlements
affect the governance of the mining and hydrocarbon sectors and the relationships
between those sectors and patterns of social inclusion and exclusion? 2) How do the
circulation of ideas and the materiality of the resources in question affect this
relationship? 3) What is the role of transnational ideational, institutional and political
economic factors in these relationships? These questions are approached by
considering the relationships between political settlements and extractive industry
since the late 19th century, with special emphasis on the last three decades. The
paper concludes that the nature of settlements has had important implications for the
relationships between resource-dependent economies and the nature and degree of
social inclusion, but far less effect on productive structure, with no political settlement
having particular success in fostering economic diversification or reducing the weight
of resource rents within the national economy. The paper also concludes that the
very nature of the extractive economy influences the dynamics of national political
settlements for the following reasons. First, the potential rents that resource
extraction makes possible, and the high cost of engaging in mining or hydrocarbon
industries, create incentives for particular forms of political exclusion. Second,
colonial and post-colonial histories of resource extraction give political valence to
ideas that have helped mobilise actors in ways that change relations of power and
institutional arrangements. Third, the materiality of subsoil resources has direct
implications for subnational forms of holding power that can influence resource
access and control. Finally, the global nature of mineral and hydrocarbon economies,
combined with the materiality of resources, bring both transnational and local political
actors into the constitution of national political settlements. This makes for a
particularly complex politics of scale surrounding settlements in resource-dependent
economies.
Description
Keywords
Extractive industries, political settlements, materiality, ideas, history, Bolivia, Zambia, Ghana, Peru