ABSTRACT
This book primarily explores the anatomy of rentier politics in extractive economies and how the phenomenon relates to conflict processes – conflict formation, aggravation, prosecution, and escalation, as well as opportunities for resolution or transformation – in the global South. The global South comprises the post-colonial and predominantly poor countries of Africa, CaribbeanPacific, Latin America and Asia – countries that despite their abundant natural resource endowments are associated with the greatest political and developmental setbacks and challenges in modern history: dictatorships and instability, weak institutional structures, corruption and misgovernance, human rights deficits, hunger and starvation, environmental degradation, refugeeism and forced migration, widespread disease including HIV/AIDS pandemic, as well as high and low intensity conflicts. It is noteworthy that the regions described in this volume as the global South is often depicted with such others terms as Third World, transitional societies, developing countries, less developed countries, underdeveloped countries, and so forth. Some of these terms, in particular, ‘Third World’ and ‘underdeveloped countries’, have a marked derogatory or pejorative slant. The concept of global South is often used in contradistinction with the global North or developed and industrialized countries, which is not strictly a geographical category but a political economy characterization.
