GLOBAL PRODUCTION NETWORKS AND THE EXTRACTIVE SECTOR: NATURAL GAS RENTS AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC CHANGE IN BOLIVIA AND PERU

Abstract

The current organisation of extractive industries through global production networks not only requires the arrangement of inter-firm systems but also the production of political spaces for ensuring resource extraction. This thesis examines the interplay between global production networks of natural gas, the state and different forms of social control over natural resources in order to grasp the production of uneven development in the resource peripheries of Peru and Bolivia. As such, this thesis mobilises GPN literature to discuss the processes and consequences of the territorial embeddedness of extractive industries. More specifically, this thesis argues that most GPN literature has underestimated the significance of resource rents for studying how global production networks of resource extraction are producing economic change in resource peripheries. To address this gap, this thesis shows how global production networks handle different forms of social control over resource governance at different scales (e.g. states, sub-national level or local communities) through resource rent distribution. In this regard, the transfer of resource rents to the producing areas is not only relevant for analysing how global production networks are producing uneven development in resource peripheries, but also exposing how global production networks handle the different forms of social control over resources through rent relations. Empirically, this contribution analyses how natural gas production networks produce economic change in the commodity source areas of Tarija (Bolivia) and La Convencion (Peru). This thesis shows how global production networks and states have intimately interacted in the socio-political construction of natural gas as a resource and have created the conditions for the coupling between global and local firms. Even though the states have barely concerned themselves with improving the participation of national firms in such a coupling, they have captured a significant percentage of the natural gas rents through royalties and taxes. Those rents are then mobilised within the country through different forms of public investment, such as social policies or public infrastructure. Against this background, the geography of resource rent distribution within the national economy reflects how long term and emergent sub-national projects have looked to exert control over resource governance, and particularly how the states attempt to legitimate political conditions for resource extraction through the distribution of resource rents to the producing areas. The most evident expression of this process was the creation of new sub-national areas in Peru (the new local district of Megantoni) and Bolivia (the new administrative area of Region Autonoma del Chaco) that modified former geographical regimes of resource rent distribution that did not grant structured coherence for resource extraction. Methodologically, this thesis deploys a relational comparative analysis for uncovering how global production networks produce socio-spatial change in resource peripheries. The empirical analysis is built on 83 semi-structured interviews undertaken during the fieldwork, along with secondary data from specialised databases and press articles.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Martin Hess (Supervisor) & Jamie Doucette (Supervisor)