Prf Giles Mohan

The exploitation and governance of natural resources offers a particularly insightful window onto two of ESID’s major concerns in this phase of research, namely the role of political settlements and development ideologies in shaping the prospects for inclusive development, and the significance of how ESID’s core domains of accumulation, redistribution and recognition relate to each other. It is also a domain in which transnational private and public actors have special weight. In terms of political settlements, the nature of the ruling coalition at the moment when natural resources are discovered has critical implications for the how and in whose interests those resources are governed (Poteete 2009). In return, the decision by governments to locate their growth strategy within a particular sector, and to exploit resources in a particular way, is causally related to the existing political settlement. On the one hand such decisions reflect the presence of certain actors within that settlement while also creating conditions for new actors to enter into and/or secure increased influence over the ruling coalition, and in the process potentially reshaping the incentives and commitment of elites. This may involve a deepening of unaccountable and clientelistic modes of political practice (e.g. through a deeper involvement of rentier forms of capital within state-business relations), may increase the weight of transnational actors within these coalitions, and/or may also catalyse a degree of countervailing power with the potential to open up of new spaces for dialogue and influence within the realm of state-society bargaining (this opening up may occur through the actions of popular groupings, civil society organizations or transnational networks). The capacity of the state to pursue the public interest is critical here, and will be shaped both by the nature of the political settlement and institutions at the point of discovery and exploitation. Going further, the design and implementation of particular forms of redistribution, which use the proceeds accumulated from natural resource extraction in particular ways (e.g. through social provisioning funded through NR-related taxation) can in turn form what Karl (2007) terms a ‘fiscal contract’, which may further reshape the character of the political settlement, in potentially progressive ways.

China's own economic development has been rapid and intense. It has delivered impressive poverty reduction and growth, though with a disturbing rise in inequalities. China will undoubtedly continue to be a major driver of economic growth regionally and globally. Critically through its economic and political relations with developing countries, China can impact on their growth and poverty levels, governance, environment, and debates about what constitutes development. While it shares some features with other Rising Powers, China is unique due to its greater involvement of the state in all aspects of internal and external development relations, its scale and the unprecedented speed of its rise, and historical and cultural differences. Failure to understand and engage with the implications of China's rise could mean missing a crucial opportunity to reverse the development fortunes of countries in the global South, as well as how we understand the very process of development itself.

REDEFINE will examine what China’s rise means for how we understand global development and, specifically, Europe’s place in it. After 15 years of ‘going out’ to source raw materials and new markets, often in the global South, China is making assertive moves into more developed economies, which were boosted by the Belt and Road Initiative linking China to Europe. At the same time, many European economies stagnated following the 2008 financial crisis with governments cutting back on infrastructure investment and looking for new sources of finance. China now sees Europe as fertile ground for new infrastructure investment. The first wave of Chinese internationalisation into the global South has been analysed largely from the perspective of international Development Studies. In the current phase, China’s move westwards radically questions the meanings and loci of development. REDEFINE’s innovation is to use insights from international development to interrogate Chinese engagement in the heart of Europe and by doing so re-orient the Eurocentric debates in the social sciences around how we define and delimit development, who drives these processes, and what it means for societies and communities affected by such investments. REDEFINE’s aims require a disaggregated perspective to unpack project-by-project effects, which will be undertaken through an assemblage approach. Through comparative, ethnographic case studies across the UK, Germany, Greece and Hungary REDEFINE will produce fine-grained empirical analysis to understand the rationales for Chinese investment into Europe, the geopolitical dynamics surrounding these financing streams, the structuring of specific projects, and the ways in which these investments interface with national and local development policy. By better understanding how investment deals operate, REDEFINE will connect Chinese and European government and corporate actors in order to influence their strategies and practices.

A new wave of economic dynamism in Africa has created a pressing challenge of translating this elite-based, resource-driven growth into more inclusive growth. Africa’s growth has intensified contemporary migration within and to the continent, with important implications for sustainable and inclusive growth in both ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ contexts. Therefore, the aim of the project is to understand how and to what extent contemporary migrant communities are taking advantage of, and contributing to, sustainable and inclusive growth in Africa. Despite being an important channel for trade, investment and skills development, little is known about the nature and potentially transformative outcomes of these diverse migration flows. In addressing this, the novelty of this project is threefold: (1) in analysing the impacts of migration through the lens of inclusive growth, (2) in exploring internal, regional and intercontinental migration together and moving the study of migration and development beyond South-to-North flows, and (3) in co-designing policy responses and capacity-building resources for optimising the contribution of migration to inclusive African growth. This proposal arises out of an ESRC GCRF network grant that has identified, through a series of workshops hosted by the African partners, that our knowledge of the size, motivations, organisation and impacts of recent flows of migrants and their relations with host communities is largely anecdotal, while official data is fragmented, inaccurate or partial. This proposal will produce the first multi-country comparative study of these groups in Africa, with a focus on how and with what impact these groups operate in the manufacturing and service sectors of four African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Mozambique) that are all on the OECD DAC list.