Journal
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Volume 61, Issue -, Pages 110-122Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.07.007
Keywords
Natural resources; Ownership; Property rights; Repression; Protests
Categories
Funding
- German Research Foundation (DFG), as part of the research project Resource Management and Intrastate Conflict [WE 4850/1-2]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Empirical tests of the resource curse thesis have provided inconclusive evidence for the claim that natural resource abundance increases the risk of social conflict. The present article argues, based on a novel political economy framework and a new data set, that it is important to analyze how states regulate the access to their natural resources to understand the interrelationship between resources and public resistance against resource extraction arrangements. We claim that international rather than state resource ownership fosters the regional protest potential and overshadows the efficiency gains that foreign investment might create. Especially the siphoning of resource rents to international owners instigates resentment among the local population. Distinguishing between private, public, domestic and international ownership arrangements, we assess the effects of natural resources control rights regimes on state repression using new GIS-based data on diamond and gold mines as well as oil and gas fields in Sub-Sahara Africa. Our multilevel analysis shows that repression as an answer to societal dissent is particularly likely in grids hosting international oil companies. Furthermore, we find that international oil firms further state repression especially under insecure property rights. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available