Abstract
AbstractArguments about the ownership of natural resources have focused on the claims of cosmopolitans, who urge an equality of global claims to resources, and resource sovereigntists, who argue that national peoples are the proper owners of their resources. This focus is mistaken: Whatever one believes about the in-principle claims of the global community, there remains the practical question of how the national surplus is to be distributed. And in addressing this question, we must look at a distinction heretofore ignored in resource discussions—that between resident workers and citizens. I argue that the extracted value of natural resources should benefit all residents of the states in which they are found, not merely all citizens. By contrast, control of natural resources should be vested in a democratic citizenry, who are nonetheless normatively constrained by the distributive principle described above. I illustrate the argument with data showing the gap, especially in the Gulf States, between principles that allocate benefits to all citizens vs. to all resident workers. My argument is grounded in a broader theory of collective agency as it applies to questions of distributive justice, and it is aimed not only to criticize practices in the Gulf but to support the more inclusive resource policies found in democracies.
Highlights
What principles should guide decisions about the exploitation and allocation of benefits derived from natural resources—or, increasingly, for carbon-based resources, decisions about their nonexploitation? Following the decline of the colonialist project, less developed states came to insist upon a policy of “resource nationalism,” or reclaiming natural resource stocks from the colonizers
Arguments about the ownership of natural resources have focused on the claims of cosmopolitans, who urge an equality of global claims to resources, and resource sovereigntists, who argue that national peoples are the proper owners of their resources
This focus is mistaken: Whatever one believes about the in-principle claims of the global community, there remains the practical question of how the national surplus is to be distributed
Summary
What principles should guide decisions about the exploitation and allocation of benefits derived from natural resources—or, increasingly, for carbon-based resources, decisions about their nonexploitation? Following the decline of the colonialist project, less developed states came to insist upon a policy of “resource nationalism,” or reclaiming natural resource stocks from the colonizers. Permanent resource sovereignty (or just “resource sovereignty”) is clearly a superior principle to the practices and principles that recognized the right of a colonizer to seize the resources of weaker states and territories It has famously had unfortunate consequences of its own: While the principle excludes extra-state actors from using force to seize property, it does nothing to dissuade internal actors from wresting control of natural resources from one another, or from the legitimate governments that initially control them. In the absence of any international control on sales, a license for brutal kleptocracy, and has resulted in enormous bloodshed in states rich in resources but weak in legitimate political institutions, notably Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Venezuela Allowing this principle to guide resource allocation and control is one significant cause of what Richard Auty has named the “resource curse.”.
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