Towards Post-neoliberal Resource Politics? The International Political Economy (IPE) of Oil and Copper in Brazil and Chile

Overcoming the Resource Curse: Reform and the Rentier State in Chile and Argentina, 1973–2000

“…This analysis applies a historical institutionalist approach (Capoccia and Keleman, ; Crabtree and Crabtree‐Condor, ; Kurtz, ; Nem Singh, ; Thelen, ) to the resource curse in Argentina and Chile, but focuses on the transformation of state–firm relations, and in that respect is also intellectually indebted to the single‐sector studies of dependent development and the triple alliance (Evans, ). The time period of the analysis focuses on the 1990s, covering the Carlos Menem administration (1989–99) in Argentina, and the centre‐left coalition governments known as the Concertación in Chile, between Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz‐Tagle (1990–2000).…”

“…Factions of the state — which were, unlike the private sector, significantly affected by the reorganization of property rights resulting from liberalization — sought rents related to the reform. In Chile, the army forced Pinochet's Chicago boys to compromise their reform objectives in mining in order to safeguard ‘strategic’ rents for the military (Nem Singh, : 337; Orihuela, : 142). In Argentina, provincial governments used liberalization as a way to convert their ownership of unrealized deposits into rent‐generating associations with multinational corporations (Interview #19).…”

Resource governance and norm domestication in the developing world

“…The politics surrounding the governance of natural resource sectors—encompassing mineral, oil and gas industries as well as forest and land‐intensive sectors—have been highly contentious for as long as modern economic systems have depended on extraction of these resources. Unlike many other industries, natural resource sectors have deep historical linkages to practices of national ownership and ideas of sovereignty (Haslam & Heidrich, 2016; Nem Singh, 2014, 2019). States remain the central actor, controlling access to territories and natural resources, and often fiercely defend the principle of sovereignty over resource governance processes and outcomes.…”

Institutions and place: bringing context back into the study of the resource curse

“…Indeed, institutional environments are not the same within Latin America. Subsequent to structural adjustment, more direct state involvement is quite feasible in Chile or resource-rich Brazil (Hochstetler and Montero 2013; Nem Singh 2014), although it looks unthinkable in Peru, where the developmental state came late and never did gain political legitimacy (Orihuela 2014b). National approaches to economic development policy diverge because the state organizations and state–society habits constructed in post-colonial history are simply not the same across Latin America, or the developing world.…”