Illegal resource extraction and state formation in emerging African democracies

Illegally accessed resources comprise an expanding, billion dollar sector in many sub-Saharan African countries. The project investigates the role the widespread, prolific, and sustained illegal extraction of a single commodity, gold, plays in the shaping and production of state consolidation and political institutional stability in an emerging African democracy, Ghana - a country that ambivalently experiences burgeoning challenges from illegal mining while also experiencing increasing political stability and an institutionalisation of formal governance. Accordingly, the project undertakes a political-economic analysis of the role of diverse elite and non-elite stakeholders, across different statutory and non-statutory institutions to comprehend the role informal governance and illegal extraction play in the attainment of broader political-economic stability. This will provide original explanations of relationships between illegality, democratisation, and state consolidation.