African Affairs · 2019 · 125 citations · 0 references
Social SciencesDevelopment StudiesNatural Resource GovernanceDevelopment EconomicsEconomic DevelopmentPolitical EconomyResource AccessResource ConflictResource CurseResource ExtractionResource Extraction HistoryResource PoliticsCorruption In Resource SectorsEconomic Growth DynamicsEconomic Growth HistoryExtractive Industries GovernanceExtractive Industry GovernanceNatural Resource CurseResource Extractivism PoliticsWeak Formal Institutions
The book reviews two decades of scholarship on the paradox of natural resource wealth and poor development, noting the rise of the “resource‑curse” framework, its critiques, and the prevailing focus on national institutions as the key to avoiding the negative outcomes associated with extractivism. The authors aim to examine, through a historical lens, how resource‑governance institutions arise and influence development in Peru, Bolivia, Zambia, and Ghana, arguing that weak national institutions alone cannot explain the adverse outcomes. The study adopts a historical approach, analyzing how context‑specific social power relations and transnational forces shape resource‑governance institutions in those four countries.
This book builds on two decades of academic enquiry into the apparent paradox between natural resource wealth and negative development outcomes. It takes a historical perspective to explore the conditions under which institutions effecting natural resources governance have emerged over time, and how these affect development in four country case studies: Peru, Bolivia, Zambia, and Ghana. In the 1990s, the idea of a ‘resource curse’ became a popular framework through which to account for the correlation between a country’s resource wealth and poor economic performance, widening inequalities, corruption, and conflict. Although the curse thesis has been critiqued and qualified in the literature, explaining the paradox remains an important area of investigation, especially considering the continued promotion of extractivism as the key driver of economic growth across the Global South. Approaches to the governance of the sector have largely focused on ‘getting the institutions right’ at the national level, and as such, failures to avoid the pitfalls associated with natural resource wealth are seen as a problem of weak national level governance institutions. One starting point of the book is that although important, weak national level institutions cannot by themselves sufficiently explain adverse development outcomes. Resource governance is shaped both by historical social power relations that are context specific and transnational forces that often are beyond the control of the national state.