The Future of Latin America’s Natural Resource States in the 21st Century

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the prospects and challenges of developmental states in the 21st century—starting with China as the most recent example of efforts at building a ‘developmental state’. By analysing the gradual, steady reforms leading to the ‘advance of the state’ and ‘retreat of the market’ in China, the book offers a rethinking on what lessons can be learned as regards state ownership. Beyond summarizing the theoretical contributions of the book, the chapter examines the future of natural-resource-producing states and why policymakers need to reexamine their assumptions about the place of state ownership in the new geopolitical context of strategic competition and climate emergency. In so doing, it proposes to rethink how resource wealth management can complement state ownership—something that the scholarship on the resource curse and neoliberalism dismissed as infeasible in the era of economic globalization.