Abstract
Scholars often see resource nationalism as either a strategy to protect national interests or an opportunistic tactic to take advantage of capitalist market upswings. However, resource nationalism is not solely a strategy for an oppressed or disadvantaged group to gain power or glean a greater share of a nation’s resource wealth. Examining the extractive peripheries of Bolivia and Indonesia at two distinct temporal junctures, we demonstrate how global power struggles affect both the possibilities for resource nationalism and the variegated forms it takes across time. Taking resource nationalism to be an action by state actors in extractive peripheries to gain both economically and politically and linking sites and moments of resource nationalism to world-systemic processes, we argue that resource nationalism is a cyclical process shaped by the strategies of hegemons and their challengers. In addition, we argue that resource nationalism tends to garner greater benefits for actors in extractive peripheries when ascending global powers provide them viable alternative markets for their raw materials.
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