This book began life back in 2011 as a half-formed idea for a PhD project comparing Bolivia’s and Zambia’s experiences of the commodity boom era. In Latin America, many of the “pink tide” governments seemed to be leveraging natural resource export booms in service of new policy initiatives and development strategies, in the process breaking with the liberal economic orthodoxy that had held sway across the region since the 1980s. My starting point was to wonder why this was happening in (some of) Latin America but no similar shifts had occurred among the resource-exporting states of sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia, where Michael Sata was about to win the presidency on a populist platform recalling aspects of some of the Latin American cases, looked like a promising place to begin.
In any event, Sata’s Patriotic Front government failed to institute any pink tide–like political economic reorientation. But in my efforts to understand why Zambia did not go the way of Bolivia (or Ecuador or Argentina), I began to broaden the focus of my research—first, on how and why the ability of states to set their own development agendas appears to wax and wane during times of flux in the global political economy (with the rise of China playing the starring role in our current era’s upheavals); and second, on the ways in which changing global conditions play out at the national level, as they alter the terrain for state–society relations in countries across the world. The result was a much wider project, encompassing fifteen resource-exporting states (including fieldwork in three—Zambia, Ecuador, and Jamaica), culminating initially in a dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in late 2015.
Since then, what eventually would become this book has gone through a series of revisions and updates to reach its current form, particularly taking into account the end of the boom (an outcome that was not yet definite in 2015) and its effects in some of the countries surveyed. Nevertheless, the book’s focus remains very much on the boom itself, understood in the abstract as a world-historical phenomenon, but one which has had profound, concrete impacts on the lives of a large percentage of the world’s population, not least across the global South.
Over its various stages the majority of this book was researched and written at the universities of Bristol (School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies) and Leeds (School of Politics and International Studies), and now completed at the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute. Thanks go to all these institutions for providing me the opportunity to work in stimulating and supportive research environments. I owe a debt of gratitude especially to my two PhD supervisors at Bristol, Jeff Henderson and Malcolm Fairbrother, for allowing me the leeway to pursue such an ambitious doctoral project. Both were extraordinarily generous with their time and support. More than anyone else, Jeff has provided steadfast guidance, assistance, and mentorship, both during my time at Bristol and beyond, without which neither the dissertation nor the book would have been possible. Malcolm’s interventions continually pushed me to improve my work and were especially crucial in helping me to shape the methodological aspects of the book.
At Bristol, my research was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council +3 studentship, awarded through the South West Doctoral Training Centre, along with overseas fieldwork funding from the same source. A Santander Latin America travel grant partly financed fieldwork in Ecuador, and a University of Bristol alumni bursary supported me while writing up the dissertation. I am grateful to the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Sociology department and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Global Studies department for hosting me during visits in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Particular thanks go to Rich Appelbaum and Jan Nederveen Pieterse at UCSB and Gay Seidman at UW–Madison.
A large number of people have provided various forms of support, guidance, and other assistance in bringing this project to fruition (and with other aspects of my work). Among others, I owe thanks to Stephanie Barrientos, Pritish Behuria, Terrell Carver, Ryerson Christie, Peter Clegg, James Copestake, Victor Faessel, Bill Freund, Tigist Grieve, Sam Hickey, Rory Horner, David Hulme, Diana Mitlin, Khalid Nadvi, Sue Newman, Rebecca Schaaf, Seth Schindler, Tamer Söyler, Robert Wade, Sean Watson, Polly Wilding, and Neil Winn, as well as my interviewees in Ecuador, Jamaica, and Zambia and the four anonymous reviewers who gave very helpful critiques and comments. I also want to thank the two editors I have worked with at Columbia University Press: first, Bridget Flannery-McCoy, who took the book on and steered me expertly through the first steps; and second, Caelyn Cobb, who took over from Bridget and has since proven equally adept in guiding the book toward publication. Both have been extraordinarily patient and helpful throughout, as has Todd Manza, who copyedited the manuscript. All errors are my responsibility alone.
Finally, special thanks go to my parents, Sue and Paul, and my brother Richard, for their support all along the way.