Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals: A Transregional Comparison of Growth Strategies in Rare Earth Mining

ongoing

Our new global political economy is increasingly defined by ‘critical raw materials’ – of which rare earths elements (or ‘rare earths’) are the most significant. The proposed study examines the globalized supply and demand for rare earths – from mining, processing, manufacturing, use and recycling – to have a closer scrutiny of mining both as a strategy for industrialization and as an integral part of contemporary efforts towards a sustainable supply of raw materials. GRIP-ARM interrogates the dynamics in rare earth mining that might lend this particular resource a tool for economic development. The project seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How do state capacity, business power and organizational structure of domestic markets shape the design of industrial policies in resource-rich countries? (2) What explains the success of some countries in generating linkages between resource extraction and manufacturing, and what accounts for their failure? (3) How effective are the responses of importing countries and their manufacturing industries in securing a stable supply while reducing the socio-environmental costs of extraction? The proposed research is one of the first systematic, comparative study on rare earths mining and economic development, which brings political science perspectives in conversation with natural resource geography and international political economy.