The Pluralistic Politics of Resource Extraction

Session Submission Type: In-Person Created Panel

Session Description

The discovery or extraction of fossil fuels brings the promise of new jobs and economic growth -- and the potential for labor unrest, environmental degradation, and repressive states eager to benefit from the energy sector. The papers on this panel investigate the pluralistic politics of resource extraction in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Romania, the United States, and China. In-depth analysis of Russia’s so-called “oil capital,” Surgut, reveals that levels of protest within the city do not neatly coincide with oil prices - nor are most protest events even connected with the oil industry. Instead, variation over time in Surgut’s economic development, its level of dependence on the central state, and local political reforms best explain protest patterns. In Russia and in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, economic, political, and industry-specific factors -- such as macroeconomic developmental models, government management of hydrocarbon revenues, and within-energy sector diversification -- have yielded divergent trajectories for energy giants emerging from a shared Soviet institutional, managerial and physical heritage. Sub-national comparison also reveals surprising similarities in the pluralistic politics of resource extraction within and beyond communist and formerly communist states. For example in northern China, like Appalachia in the United States, protests by mine workers resisted national industrialization efforts and local political machines targeting regional coal resources, while state-led anti-poverty initiatives failed to gain traction. In contrast, subnational differences in land ownership, fiscal, and legal systems contributed to divergence in shale gas development in Romania and Pennsylvania. The panel exhibits pluralism in the presenters’ career stages, methodological approaches, and geographical scope of research, including multi-sited fieldwork and novel sub-national comparisons that challenge nation-state boundaries and conventional analytical frameworks.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Mountains & Mobilization: Appalachia and North China in Comparative Perspective - Manfred Elfstrom, University of British Columbia, Okanagan

• Shale Gas in Eastern Europe: Local Hostility and Grassroots Protests - Andreea Raluca Maierean, Wilkes University

• Protest and Elite Strategies in the Oil Capital of Russia: Surgut in Transition - Allison D. Evans, University of Nevada, Reno

• Varieties of Eurasian Petrostates: Limits of the "Resource Curse" in the FSU - Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania; Mikhail A. Strokan, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Ian M. Hartshorn University of Nevada, Reno