Regimes of Extraction: Competing Legitimacies and Resource Governance in the Eastern DRC

Abstract

In this thesis I look at the mining industry in the eastern DRC as a unique context of resource governance and I introduce a new actor in the contestation of power and legitimacy which I claim sustains the current extractive regime. In a context of conflict and failing state legitimacy, there are multinational corporations which function as governing actors both beyond and in conjunction with the state, this is motivated by profit and results in exploitative behavior. I have concluded that there is both a missing link between hybrid governance debates and debates on the resource curse. I illustrate how multinationals are involved in and profit from the context of insecurity and their role in hybrid or proxy governance taken on in spatially removed zones of extraction by analyzing existing debates and reflecting on three primary case studies. Tracing the historical roots of extractive governance and conducting interviews I have found that multinationals are participants in governance practices and subject to analysis on several levels – there is a temporal analysis which illustrates the continuities between colonial regimes of extraction and those of today and there is a spatial level of analysis which can be illustrated by the monopolized control of pockets of resource wealth and the archipelization of the Congolese state. Through reconceptualizing multinational corporations as important and exploitative stakeholders in extractive governance, I hope to broaden the current understanding of who is involved in regimes of extractive governance and delve deeper into how these regimes are legitimized locally through engrained mechanisms of exploitation and internationally through consumption. In doing this, I seek to connect zones of productivity to zones of consumption. Without broader awareness of these complex issues, consumers are actively involved in the continued exploitation of resources in the DRC and beyond.