The papers below are selectively featured to showcase my contribution across a variety of themes in the social sciences. A complete list of my journal articles and book sections can be found here. Some of these papers can be downloaded in my Research Gate profile.
Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transition
Mining Our Way Out of the Climate Change Conundrum? The Power of a Social Justice Perspective
The tide is shifting away from fossil fuel dependency in favor of clean technologies. However, an uncritical embrace of clean technology may also lead to greater inequalities and uneven development.
The New Geographies of an Energy Transition – A Challenge or Developmental Opportunity?
In the current global and regional context of capitalist development, the transition to clean technologies has emerged as the overarching solution to the crisis. ‘Critical raw materials’ (CRMs) are also known as technology or minor metals, extracted in smaller quantities that are widely used across a range of intermediate and final output manufacturing sectors. The chapter seeks to examine the place of Latin America in this emerging global value chain, and the extent to which a renewed industrial strategy can be crafted to enable regional governments to take advantage of this new boom in resource production.
Environmental Governance amidst the Climate Crisis and Energy Transition in the 21st Century
Major changes within the macro-political and economic realms are not insulated from the crisis of climate governance. Faced with uncertainty and crisis, Western governments promote the unprecedented drive to reduce carbon emissions during the Anthropocene. While global emissions still require slowing down, the global governance architecture overseeing climate policies falls short in securing a pathway towards energy transition – that is, away from fossil fuels-intensive growth – for many countries. In this context, environmental governance is a focal point to understand how moments of crisis can yield transformative political action.
Political Economy of Development
The Renaissance of the Developmental State in the Age of Post-Neoliberalism
This chapter analyses the background of the developmental state and assesses why the developmental state framework is the most effective way to explain the return of state activism – and the renewal of industrial policy – in the developing world.
Energy Politics of Brazil
This book chapter examines energy security as a driving force for economic development. We show that the Brazilian state has remained a key actor in shaping its energy needs and attempts at energy diversification.
Industrial Policy and State-Making: Brazil’s Attempt at Oil-based Industrial Development
The article analyses the relationship between the national state, Petrobras and industrial elites in the context of Brazil’s renewed emphasis on sector-specific industrial development.
The Theory and Practice of Building Developmental States in the Global South
Reviewing decades of thinking regarding the role of the state in economic development, we argue for the continued relevance of the concept of the ‘developmental state’. With reference to Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, Rwanda and China, we contend that new developmental states are evidence of a move beyond the historical experience of East Asian development.
State-owned Enterprises and the Political Economy of State–state Relations in the Developing World
The article contributes to the developmental state debate by exploring multiple patterns of state enterprise reforms that have enabled governments to generate competitive domestic firms. These reforms offer new theoretical insights as regards the diverse institutional arrangements co-constituting state–state relationships across countries and sectors.
Citizenship and Social Protests
Neoliberalism, Resource Governance and Everyday Politics of Protests in the Philippines
The book chapter analyses the growing strength of social protests resisting large-scale, pro-FDI mining policies in the Philippines. It probes into the interactions of macro-structural conditions and agency of communities in resisting marketization brought forth by extractive activities.
Protest, Citizenship and Democratic Renewal: The Student Movement in Chile
The article examines the resurgence of student protests 20 years after the paradigmatically successful democratization in Chile. We argue that protests have re-politicized and transformed debates about what democracy and citizenship should mean. Claims-making are not simply demands for educational reform but a new model of citizenship based on rights and welfare, in contrast to neoliberal models of citizenship as individualisation and consumption.
Who Owns the Minerals? Repoliticizing Neoliberal Governance in Brazil and Chile
The article probes into the role of labour unions in oil and mining sectors in repoliticizing the governance and ownership of natural resources. Examining trade unions in highly institutionalized resource governance models, it probes into attempts by unions to embed notions of social justice.
Natural Resource Politics and Governance
The Role of Domestic Policy Coalitions in Extractive Governance
The paper examines how coalition-building shapes the implementation of ‘responsible mining’ as a regulatory reform agenda in the Philippines. Using a within-case comparison method, we argue that policy coalitions embracing civil society tend to diffuse global regulatory norms more successfully than exclusionary coalitions.
Debating Unconventional Energy: Social, Political and Economic Implications
This survey article examines social science literature on unconventional energy, focussing on energy economics and geopolitics, community mobilization, and state and private regulatory responses.
Natural Resources
The book chapter examines how common international factors, namely the China-induced resource boom, shaped the rise of ‘resource nationalism’ in Latin America. It argues that governments were more successful at capturing windfall profits but less so in capital reinvestments and promoting structural transformation.
Governing Natural Resources
This chapter explores the place of natural resources in contemporary South American governance, understood in terms of state–market and state–society relations. It focuses on resource nationalism as a policy framework in understanding the governance and politics of South America. The chapter analyses the transition from Washington Consensus towards resource nationalism, and argues that resource nationalism offered wider policy spaces to maximize rent capture and bring industrial policy back into the governance agenda.
Jewellord Nem Singh 
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