- Convenors:
-
Nicholas Jepson
(University of Manchester)
Imogen Liu
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Shifting geopolitics and development futures
Short Abstract
Despite its centrality to development post-1945, great power competition has largely disappeared from development scholarship. Amid today's ratcheting US-China tensions, we invite papers which seek to reengage with the renewed salience of geopolitical rivalry for 21st century development.
Description
Cold War rivalry was central to the original post-WWII foundations of development as an international agenda, with the US and Soviet Union presenting rival visions of modernisation to the decolonising world. Since the 1990s and until recently, however, the salience of great power competition has disappeared from view in a development landscape shaped under US hegemony.
Today, considerable concern exists as to the implications for the South arising from intensifying geopolitical competition between China, the United States and other major powers, alongside hope that some states might parlay this struggle for markets, production inputs, infrastructure corridors, and political allies to their own developmental advantage.
In this context, this panel invites papers which seek to once again integrate a concern for great power relationships into analyses of contemporary development. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Historical comparisons between contemporary development dynamics and those of previous eras, most obviously with the Cold War, but potentially extending back to prior periods;
- Attempts to conceptualise relationships between geopolitics, great power contestation and development in the present as well as historically;
- Changing development cooperation strategies of various powers (e.g. the US, China, EU, Japan, India, Brazil etc) amid the breakdown of the liberal world order;
- Developmental consequences of geopolitically-inflected shifts in the global division of labour (e.g. ‘friendshoring’, securitisation of global value chains)
- National development strategies in light of renewed great power competition (e.g. efforts to leverage strategic mineral resources, connector countries).
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Zambia has sought to capitalise on growing geopolitical frictions to aid its development. Through an exploration of infrastructure projects, and industrial development zones, this paper argues that, while there are many discussions, less action is seen at the ground level.
Paper long abstract
Spurred on through the growth of renewable energy technologies and a growing securitisation of mineral value chains, ‘critical minerals’ have emerged as a point of contention between global powers. Whilst seen as a point of vulnerability for advanced economies, for mineral-producing states, this increased competition, and subsequent demand for a diversification of mineral supply provides an opportunity. Being rich in a variety of different critical minerals, Zambia is one such country that stands to benefit. Attracting American, European, Chinese, Indian, and Arab partners to its mining sector, Zambia has sought to capitalise on growing geopolitical frictions to aid mining-based development. This is not just in terms of foreign direct investment, but also for value addition and infrastructure development. Using documentary evidence and elite interviews based on eight months of fieldwork across Zambia, this paper explores how the geopolitics of critical minerals is influencing mining-based development strategies, and how the country is utilising geopolitical rivalries for domestic gains. It does this through two case studies: Firstly, it explores the US and EU backed Lobito corridor, which is seen as counter Chinese dominance of mineral value chains in the region. Secondly, it explores the US-backed DRC-Zambia effort to establish a battery manufacturing sector. It argues that, in the extractives sector, it appears that geopolitics is upstaging economics. However, whilst there are a lot of discussions at the national and international level, less action can be seen on the ground, highlighting the limits of relying on geopolitical rivalries for sustainable development.
Paper short abstract
Argentina stands in the cross-hairs of US-China rivalry. Its bountiful yet untapped copper reserves set the stage for a 21st-century case study of geopolitical competition, natural resource-led economic growth, and national development. What potential opportunities and pitfalls lie ahead?
Paper long abstract
Geopolitical competition over the planet’s critical minerals (CM) intensifies daily and, in the coming decades, is poised to shape development in the Global South. Complex, long-term, billion-dollar private and public CM deals often overshadow the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) efforts. In 2025, symbolically, the US discontinued USAID, yet it signed CM deals with Ukraine, Malaysia, Thailand, and Argentina. In the future, geopolitical competition will intersect with domestic institutions of developing countries, and over time, national development outcomes will differ. This paper analyzes Argentina and copper. UNCTAD predicts global copper demand surging 40% by 2040, outstripping supply. Argentina’s vast deposits came to light a century ago, but only now is its mining output taking off. Why? Today, it produces no copper, but by 2035, it will be a top-five producer. Future copper revenue presents a unique development opportunity. Prior global copper booms bypassed Argentina – but not this time. Two factors caused this unexpected outcome. The first is the profile of geopolitical competition. During the Cold War (1950-1990), the USSR’s copper production covered its domestic manufacturing needs. Today, both China and the US import copious amounts of copper, fueling geopolitical tensions. In sum, China-US competition for copper differs from the Cold War. The second is the evolution of domestic institutions in Argentina. Perpetual economic crises, persistent high inflation, plus capital controls mask shifts in domestic institutions that slowly encouraged mining investment. Yes, it’s an odd time for Argentina’s “copper moment,” but it is also a revealing case study.
Paper short abstract
Capitalist cycles lead to shifts in demand and geopolitical competition for resources, offering potential developmental switching points for exporters. Today's race for critical minerals is examined via this lens. Prospects for systemic shifts in global capitalist hierarchies are currently limited.
Paper long abstract
Previous cycles of global capitalist expansion have tended to begin with a reconfiguration of the geographies and modalities of production and trade. As part of this, shifts in quantity and type of raw material demand have driven rounds of great power struggle to establish and control new resource peripheries, supply lines, and associated infrastructure. Some authors have suggested that such world-historical moments provide switching points, in which peripheral resource exporters may be able to take advantage of these shifts in order to negotiate a favourable rearticulation of their positioning within global circuits of production and trade. This paper considers the contemporary energy transition from this perspective, in order to understand the developmental opportunities and constraints for peripheral states presented by the current race for supplies of critical minerals on the part of the US, China, EU and others. Historical comparison with 20th century resource cycles suggests that individual states may be able to obtain some beneficial concessions from competing great powers, though this will vary, depending upon the materiality and geography of particular minerals. Drawing on contemporary examples in the lithium, nickel and cobalt sectors, the paper concludes that there will be few prospects for exporters to systematically upgrade their positioning within global capitalist hierarchies without concerted collective action, of a kind which currently appears a distant prospect.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how Kazakhstan navigates multipolar development competition involving China, Russia, and Türkiye. It argues that development outcomes are shaped by local agency and strategic coordination rather than by external power hierarchies alone.
Paper long abstract
Contemporary development processes increasingly unfold within a multipolar environment shaped by overlapping economic, political, and institutional influences. This paper examines how Kazakhstan navigates multipolar development competition among China, Russia, and Türkiye, focusing on the role of local agency in shaping development trajectories amid geopolitical uncertainty.
Drawing on a qualitative case study, the paper analyses Kazakhstan’s multi-vector development strategy as a framework for managing external engagement. China promotes infrastructure-led growth through large-scale investment and connectivity projects; Russia’s role is grounded in historically embedded economic ties and regional institutional arrangements; and Türkiye contributes through a more flexible development approach, emphasising institutional cooperation, education, and sector-specific assistance. These actors do not operate within a single hierarchy but represent distinct development logics that intersect within Kazakhstan’s domestic policy space.
Rather than portraying Kazakhstan as a passive arena of external competition, the paper argues that development outcomes are mediated through domestic priorities, institutional coordination, and selective partnership-building. Kazakhstan’s position as a connector state enables it to integrate elements of different development models while preserving policy autonomy and strategic flexibility.
By foregrounding multipolar development competition and local agency, the paper contributes to debates in development studies on how states in the global South navigate fragmented and increasingly politicised development landscapes.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the changing character of development in the Second Cold War, conceptualising it as part a larger shift towards ‘post-multilateralism,’ a condition where the formal shells of multilateral institutions persist, but their core principles are hollowed out by leading states.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the changing character of development in the Second Cold War. The global development system was described by Friedmann (1964) as the ‘greatest achievement’ of the post-WWII multilateral order, a ‘permanent and inevitable aspect of contemporary international organisation.’ Yet today, this order is under sustained assault, as states slash aid budgets, withdraw from the Sustainable Development Goals and redefine development through a geopolitical lens. This assault, we argue, is part of a larger shift towards ‘post-multilateralism,’ a condition where the formal shells of multilateral institutions persist, but their core principles are hollowed out and strategically undermined. We locate the emergence of post-multilateralism in the structural shifts in geopolitics and the global economy, marked by the crisis of neoliberalism, the embrace of state capitalism, the end of US hegemony, and the emergence of the ‘Second Cold War,’ which are leading to a non-hegemonic world order, in which multilateral norms are seen as obstacles to overcome. We chart the strategies states adopt to unmake multilateral development, including sabotaging, bypassing and disengaging from existing institutions, and diverting development cooperation towards geopolitical and commercial goals. We also chart efforts to preserve the development system, before considering the implications of post-multilateral development order.
Paper short abstract
We reconsider the notion of ‘global development’ in light of geopolitical shifts in the international political economy.
Paper long abstract
Authors: Jessica DiCarlo, Jack Taggart, Ilias Alami, Meredith DeBoom, Shahar Hameiri, Lee Jones, Emma Mawdsley, Marcus Power, Seth Schindler
Abstract: Is development dying, again? This article interrogates what comes after ‘global development’ by examining how geopolitical competition is reconfiguring the geographical focus, spatial nomenclatures, core meanings, and underlying morality and actors of contemporary ‘Big D’ Development. We contend that what is unraveling today is not development itself, but a historically specific, post-Cold War vision of global development as universal, multilateral, market-oriented, and depoliticised. What follows, however, is not a repetition of earlier Cold War-era configurations but a qualitatively new and incipient paradigm we conceptualize as inter/nationalism, characterized by distinct policies, practices, and paradigms (e.g., South-South cooperation, US-China competition, resurgent state capitalisms) that signal a reordering of development toward nationally driven, security-inflected, and strategically leveraged development agendas for both donor and recipient states. These dynamics have fractured the institutional and discursive formation of global development and re-politicized development across multiple scales.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how China–Saudi economic cooperation and dispute-resolution choices (ICSID vs ADR) reshape development, sovereignty and policy space amid renewed US–China rivalry, using treaties and interviews to show how Gulf ‘connector states’ navigate great-power competition.
Paper long abstract
Cold War–era development was explicitly structured around US–Soviet rivalry, yet contemporary development scholarship has often bracketed out great power competition. This paper recentres geopolitics by examining how China–Saudi economic cooperation reconfigures development, sovereignty and legal order under intensifying US–China tensions. Focusing on large-scale energy and infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative and Vision 2030, it analyses how the choice between ICSID-style Investor–State Dispute Settlement and more flexible, culturally embedded Alternative Dispute Resolution (mediation, med-arb, Sulh) shapes policy autonomy and bargaining power. Drawing on treaty texts, arbitration rules and elite interviews with mediators, commercial lawyers and policy experts in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and mainland China, the paper shows how Riyadh leverages forum selection, dispute-resolution clauses and “non-interference” narratives to diversify beyond Western legal dependence while avoiding overreliance on Beijing. It argues that China’s promotion of ADR constitutes not only a technocratic efficiency fix but also a strategy to build parallel legal infrastructures in the Global South. The analysis contributes to debates on how renewed great power competition restructures development trajectories, particularly for “connector states” in the Gulf seeking to convert geopolitical rivalry into developmental advantage.
Paper short abstract
This study examines how post-2020 sovereign debt crises are reshaping overseas development finance amid US–China rivalry. Using Sri Lanka and Kenya, it shows how US led financial architecture constrains Chinese lenders while enabling a more state-driven resurgence of US development finance.
Paper long abstract
Ongoing geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, combined with a wave of sovereign debt crises, is currently reshaping overseas development finance. Recent sovereign defaults have challenged China’s position as the leading development financier of Global South. During debt restructurings, Chinese actors have been pushed into a subordinate role due to the structural power exercised by US-led institutions within the international financial architecture. Chinese policy banks were compelled to operate within frameworks set by the IMF and Paris Club in which US influence remains substantial, making Chinese creditors to occupy a subordinate position. This shift has moved Chinese overseas lending from the assertive expansion of the previous decade toward a more defensive posture. Conversely, US has adopted proactive approach in overseas lending as evident in Development Finance Corporation (DFC) lending to Kenya. Against this backdrop, this study explores political economy factors that explain apparent contrasting approaches in overseas development finance by China and US after post 2020 debt crises. Research uses Sri Lanka and Kenya as case studies, and draw insights from major loans provided by China and US to both countries after 2020. Through examining these loans, study investigate the political economy of four interrelated elements namely; nature of lending approach, assessment of risk, institutional structure and global debt architecture that shapes development finance choices. Preliminary findings suggests that fragmented and commercially driven Chinese policy banks are compelled to adopt a risk averse approach while political preferences of current US administration had strengthen state driven lending.