This panel aims to critically analyze the ongoing revival of subsurface natural resources extraction in Western countries. Considering the new mining projects emerging in France and in Quebec, for example, but also the recent boom for unconventional oil and gas across the globe, questions on the political aspects of these projects emerge: Which political factors contribute to relocate extractive industries in Western countries where they tended to be declining? Is there qualitative change during the planning and implementation phases of projects, towards public participation and consultation or community profit-sharing?

Panel organized by Sébastien Chailleux (Centre Emile Durkheim, IEP Bordeaux/Université Laval, Québec), Kristina Maud Bergeron (Université du Québec à Montréal) and Olivier Labussière (PACTE, IEP Grenoble)

Argument

This panel aims to critically analyze the ongoing revival of subsurface natural resources extraction in Western countries. Considering the new mining projects emerging in France and in Quebec, for example, but also the recent boom for unconventional oil and gas across the globe, questions on the political aspects of these projects emerge: Which political factors contribute to relocate extractive industries in Western countries where they tended to be declining? Is there qualitative change during the planning and implementation phases of projects, towards public participation and consultation or community profit-sharing?

We want to emphasize two research orientations.

The first one questions the policy construction of those extractive projects:

• What is the political color of the decision-makers supporting those projects? How are public policies facilitating or constraining those projects? How do proponents of unconventional oil and gas, or new coal, rare earths, and uranium mines use carbon emission reduction and the fight against climate change in the justification of their projects? The influence of local, national and transnational mobilization against those projects has various outcomes: which variables influence political decisions regulating such activities (for example, a moratorium on shale gas)?
• How regulated is the deployment of technologies used for the exploration and the exploitation of unconventional energies (horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, …)? What types of actors frame the development of technologies and their related issues (social, environmental, economic)?
• How are unconventional energies included in energy transition scenarios? In mining projects exploiting minerals used in renewable energy technologies, how are the proponents talking about the contribution of their project to an energetic transition? Which groups/actors (industrial, scientists) are producing these scenarios?

The second orientation questions the contents of this new paradigm and aims to create a dialogue between top-down approaches of social acceptance and bottom-up studies on local protests:

• How were potential opponents “enrolled” to accept such projects? What are the narratives struggles? What is the scope of public participation (narrow debates on technical regulation or wider questioning over the appropriateness of the project)? How do companies get and maintain a social license to operate? Are social sciences integrated upstream in those projects?
• How are unconventional energy policies framing their ‘public’ at different levels (transnational, national, local)? How are projects proponents using demonstration sites to attest of their ability to reduce uncertainties and manage risks?

Submission guidelines

The overall theoretical approach is situated in the coproduction framework, which aims to stress how knowledge and technology, and social, political and economic orders came to be constructed alongside. The panel will look firstly at the Global North but comparative studies with countries from the Global South are welcomed.

Paper proposals can be submitted on the IPSA website and (additionally) to the panel chair: s.chailleux@gmail.com

Paper proposals for any session must be submitted in English or French.

Paper proposals in Turkish may be submitted in a panel in Turkish in the LOC sessions.

The Abstract must not exceed 1650 characters (approximately 250 words).

Schedule

• Deadline: October 7^th 2015

• Conference: Istanbul – July 23^rd - 28^th 2016
• 24th World Congress of Political Science
• Paper proposers are notified of final results : Jan 18, 2016
• Deadline to register to appear in the Printed Program : Apr 13, 2016
• Final Registration Deadline for all panelists : May 05, 2016

Scientific committee

• Sébastien Chailleux (Centre Emile Durkheim, IEP Bordeaux/Université Laval, Québec)
• Kristina Maud Bergeron (Université du Québec à Montréal)
• Olivier Labussière (PACTE, IEP Grenoble)