Almost all of the literature on resource nationalism follows one axis: the shift of power between the state and capital. But resource governance is not a line between two players. It is a triangle: the state, the company and the community living on the deposit. The same policy can strengthen state sovereignty while leaving this third actor without a meaningful role in the decision.
The gap in the literature
The race for critical minerals has returned resource nationalism to the headlines. Fragmentation within the G7 and BRICS gives producer countries room to manoeuvre, while Russia has sharply accelerated the deprivatisation of strategic assets since 2022.
The term is usually defined narrowly: stronger state control over extraction and the distribution of rents at the expense of foreign investors. That definition is correct, but incomplete. Investment and geopolitical analysis asks who received a stake, whose contract was revised and whose licence was revoked. It rarely asks how power was redistributed inside the state — between the centre and the territory, between the regulator and the people living above the deposit.
Resource nationalism is identified by control. But its consequences do not end there.
Infographic 1: resource governance is triangular
The conventional model is bilateral: the company extracts and the state regulates. The community physically living on the deposit is treated as an externality, not as a party to the relationship. Once it is added as a third node, “who decides?” and “who bears the costs?” become structural questions rather than a special case of FPIC.
Licenses, regulates and captures rent.
Extracts, invests and manages operational risk.
Lives with impacts and holds local knowledge.
The triangle does not claim that the three parties have equal power. It makes the imbalance visible. A state can increase its control over a project without increasing the community’s ability to participate, change the conditions or withhold consent.
Four questions, not one score
The same political step — nationalisation, a licence revision or an export ban — produces four different accounts. FPIC belongs primarily to the third question, but it does not replace the other three.
Who legally and materially controls the resource?
Where do rents, royalties and processing gains go?
Who can influence the project before approval? This is where FPIC matters.
Who carries the environmental, social and financial risk?
These are parallel dimensions of the same event, not sequential stages of one process. A shift from foreign to state ownership may answer the first question while leaving the other three unchanged.
Four mechanisms of state control
Resource nationalism rarely exists in a single form. It lives in layers: at the surface, control is written into law and strategy; deeper down, there are fewer formulations and more discretion. The mechanisms below are ordered by how visible they are to an outside observer.
Explicit and codified
The rule is written directly into law or a national strategy and applies equally to everyone. Examples include a ban on exporting raw ore, a mandatory state stake or a fixed royalty.
Blind spot: the absence of a consent requirement can be codified just as openly as the control mechanism itself.
Procedural and discretionary
The law introduces an approving authority that decides according to criteria that are never exhaustively defined. From the outside it looks like an ordinary regulatory procedure; from the inside it is a targeted lever.
Blind spot: hearings and environmental assessments may take place while the decisive approval happens elsewhere.
Retrospective and judicial
The claim is formally about privatisation, safety or environmental violations from years ago. The effect of nationalisation is achieved without a law proclaiming it: the legal basis for the claim is activated selectively.
Blind spot: community land-use status and previously established guarantees can be weakened without a law explicitly targeting Indigenous rights.
A label, not a rule
The category is assigned administratively, without a parliamentary procedure, and can change without public debate. Formally, it is not a ban; it is a list that one may or may not be placed on.
Blind spot: the same labelling mechanism can constrain Indigenous organisations and civil society as well as foreign capital.
Russia: from precedent to system
Russian resource nationalism did not begin in 2022. It accumulated over two decades, layer by layer. 2022 did not create the mechanism; it sharply accelerated one that already existed.
| Period | Development | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Yukos case | Tax claims and criminal prosecution dismantled the country’s largest private oil company. |
| 2006 | Sakhalin-2 | A production-sharing agreement was revised and the controlling stake moved to Gazprom. |
| 2008 | Subsoil law | Control over strategic deposits became subject to government-commission approval. |
| 2022 | Strategic-assets decree | Transactions and the assets of departing Western companies moved under executive control. |
| 2023 → | Deprivatisation campaign | Privatisation deals are challenged through procedural and “strategic asset” claims. |
The point is not that every case is identical. It is that the legal form changes while the distributional question remains: who gains control, and who gains authority over the decision?
Infographic 2: control and community authority are separate axes
State control over rents and community power in the decision should be plotted separately. A country can move right on the first axis without moving up on the second.
The high-control / low-authority field is the most populated in the cases reviewed. None combines strong state control with strong community power in the decision. That is not proof that such a combination is impossible; it is a pattern worth testing against new cases.
A practical checklist
Before calling something “resource nationalism” and stopping there, work through all four questions:
- Who controls? Look for ownership, licences, contractual rights and the practical ability to block a transaction — not rhetoric about sovereignty.
- Who benefits? Trace the distribution of income to the budget, a region, shareholders and the local community.
- Who decides? Identify participation before approval and the ability to change the decision. FPIC belongs here, but the question is broader than FPIC.
- Who bears the costs? Track the actual distribution of environmental, social and financial risk, not promised compensation.
The blind spot
Resource nationalism can be successful fiscal or industrial policy. But stronger state control alone does not show who received the benefit, who gained the right to make decisions or who bore the costs. These outcomes must be assessed separately.
The central blind spot is therefore not a missing definition. It is a missing distributional account: the state may recover sovereignty over the resource while the people living above the deposit remain outside the decision.
After control changes, a second account begins. Assess resource nationalism not only by the direction in which control is transferred, but also by its internal distributive consequences.