Dependency, Rent, and the Failure of Neo-Extractivism

The chapter analyzes the development expectations and the rise, as well as failure and demise, of neo-extractivism in South America since the beginning of the 2000s. In particular, we focus on the structural background as well as on the underlying preconditions of the neo-extractivist development model. The chapter adds another aspect to the ongoing discussion on dependency and neo-extractivism that has hardly been considered so far: the prevalence and relevance of rent. Following the concept introduced in the introduction of this volume, we identify a particular mechanism of dependency in the effects of economic rents, understood as a specific form of economic surplus emerging from monopolies, ownership, market restrictions, and the concentration of political power. Rents are an internal as well as external mechanism of dependency, and societies that essentially depend on rent for their social reproduction face serious challenges in approaching diversification and abandoning their rent-based economic sectors, and thereby freeing themselves of dependency. For the dependency research program it must therefore be said in the future: bring rent in.