Rethinking Resource Conflict

Abstract

Reconsiders how natural resource abundance in minerals, oil and gas, water, and land is frequently associated with various negative development outcomes. Policy making has been affected by the theories on (1) economic performance of resource abundance; (2) political behavioral variables; and (3) civil war onset, duration, and intensity. Mechanisms that abate the resource curse include short-term confidence and peacebuilding, reconstruction of war economies, corporate social responsibility (CSR), medium-term legitimacy and state-building achieved through fiscal transparency and sharing of resource revenues, and regional anti-corruption strategies. The need for more qualitative social and historical analysis demands a new approach to the socio-economics of resource governance which builds on current scholarly trends toward reinstating grievance alongside greed as a factor defining natural resource conflict and suggests the further study of contrasting resource epistemologies as another layer in such friction. Including a larger spectrum of conflict reveals the importance of civil society, and with it of bargaining and confrontation to secure public agreements on natural resource management and the distribution of rents.