The ecuadorian oil era: Nature, rent, and the state

Abstract

By focusing on half-century of recent Latin American economic history, this book presents a multidisciplinary approach to the relentless quest of development in the Global South and aims at revitalizing the academic debate if natural resources abundance is a blessing or a curse. The pioneering diachronic comparative approach of two Ecuadorian oil booms, 1) 1972-1980, and 2) 2003-2014, shows processes of continuity and change in the capacity of the peripheral state to intervene in the national development process and its consequences on social formation framed by the contemporary forms of global capitalism and the irruption of environmental thinking into development policymaking.