How do “Mineral-States” Learn? Path-Dependence, Networks, and Policy Change in the Development of Economic Institutions

Based on case-study methods, I draw lessons from the political economy of macroeconomic management in Chile and Peru to explain how “mineral-states” learn to think long term and eventually escape the resource curse. I give an institutionalist account of the rise of countercyclical funds, showing how the long-term development of elite networks qualifies the contemporary making of curse-escapes. Policy networks compose one central avenue of institutional development, for both the reproduction of path-dependence and the making of institutional change. The exposition challenges political economy of development frameworks which over-emphasize structural (initial) conditions and assume steady (rent-seeking) behavior of state agents.