Pursuing post-neoliberal alternatives during the global governance interregnum: the case of Africa’s new oil producers

Does the twenty-first century ‘interregnum’ in global governance offer developing countries more space to pursue post-neoliberal alternatives? We address this question by investigating how new oil producers in the global South have negotiated international efforts to promote the ‘Norwegian Model’ of oil governance, which separates out policy, regulatory, and commercial functions. Comparative case-study analysis across three countries in Africa reveals a mixed picture. In most instances, adopting the Norwegian Model reduced rather than enhanced the capacity of new producers to govern oil, not least as newly fragmented oil sectors helped fuel inter-elite factionalism. On the space for pursuing post-neoliberal alternatives, most international actors have been unwilling to support the resource nationalist ambitions of ruling coalitions to either strengthen their own national oil companies or empower regulatory authorities to oversee international oil companies. Only where countries had already invested in state capacity to govern oil before the onset of neoliberal governance modalities have they been able to both improve their oil governance capacities and enact post-neoliberal alternatives. Deploying a critical political-economy framework, this study emphasizes the difficulties that global South countries face in navigating the current global governance interregnum but also identifies a path forward for those with specific histories of state-building.