COLLAPSE OF THE STATE AND COMPETITIVENESS - EVIDENCE FROM AFRICAN AND POST-SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

This paper suggests that the competitiveness of mining operations relies on the capacity of the state to relieve mining production from regional social constraints. Through various examples taken from African and post-socialist countries, it compares the ways in which production and social activities are handled at the micro level by capitalist, socialist and rent earning states. As the capitalist state appears today to be the only form of state able to organize production and welfare separately, the paper examines the conditions under which such a separation could occur in mining and metallurgical operations in non-capitalist countries.