Citizenship, Democratization, and Resource Politics

It is perhaps surprising that scholars have largely failed to engage with the consequences of democratisation when it comes to understanding resource governance, given the rising tide of citizenship demands in recent times. Much of the political economy literature has paid attention, overwhelmingly, to technocratic forms of governance in resource-rich states, inadvertently downplaying the ways in which social mobilisation and community organisation also shape political outcomes. In this chapter, we seek to go some way towards redressing that omission. We challenge claims around the inevitability of the resource curse in the developing world and examine the ways in which contestation and cooperation in the natural resource sector shape governance and democratisation.