Shifting states: the constitutional risks of extractive development

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that so-called “development” strategies based on natural resource extraction make the national state vulnerable to a de facto process of constitutional change. It develops a new conceptual framework based on the materiality of state constitutions, which informs a methodological approach focused on the identification and analysis of legal and political change within three “pressure point” areas of core concern to constitutional law and politics: legislative sovereignty, territorial integration and administration, and the governance of citizenship. This approach extends the gaze of law and development scholarship to identify constitutional issues arising from extractive development models, and more generally to appreciate how political economy can be understood as a relevant dimension of constitutional law and politics.