The Developmental Challenges of Mining and Oil. Lessons from Africa and Latin America.

The authors explain why the discovery and development of natural resources is commonly associated with unstable and unequal development, and frequently with violence. They demonstrate the need for policies and institutions by reflecting on both successes and failures in case studies on Botswana, Nigeria and Niger as well as Bolivia, Chile and Peru.

ROSEMARY THORP Emeritus Fellow at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK, and also an Emeritus Reader of the University. She was Chair of Oxfam GB between 2001 and 2006. Among her principal works are Peru 1890-1977: Growth and in an Open Economy (1978, with Geoff Bertram); Progress, Poverty and Exclusion: an Economic History of Twentieth Century Latin America (1998), and Ethnicity and the Persistence of Inequality: the Case of Peru (2010, with Maritza Paredes).

STEFANIA BATTISTELLI Graduate of the University of Oxford, UK, and University of Washington, USA. She has been working since 2008 as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Her work focuses on addressing social and economic inequalities in food security and rural development. Research interests include institutional change and the political economy of natural resources management.

YVAN GUICHAOUA Lecturer in Politics and International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK.Previously, he was Research Officer at the Oxford Department of International Development, UK and Research Fellow at Yale University, USA. His research focuses on political violence and the political economy of mineral resources in West Africa.

JOSÉ CARLOS ORIHUELA Postdoctoral Scholar in International Studies at The Watson Institute, Brown University, USA, where he teaches courses on political economy and environmental governance. He waspreviously a doctoral fellow for Global Environment and Conflict Resolution at CICR, Columbia University. His current research deals with policy diffusion and the Latin American green state.

MARITZA PAREDES Research Fellow at the Center for Latin America and Caribbean Studies at Brown University, USA. She is completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford on mining and state formation in the Andes. Published work includes: (with Rosemary Thorp) Ethnicity and the Persistence of Inequality: the Case of Peru(2010), and (with Ismael Muñoz and Rosemary Thorp) an article on 'Group Inequalities and the Nature and Power of Collective Action: Case Studies from Peru' in World Development.