Guns, gender and petroleum: a critical analysis of the underlying dynamics of Timor-Leste’s development trajectory

Abstract

This article examines the underlying political economy context of the uneven development outcomes in post-conflict Timor-Leste. We use a modified version of a structural political economy approach that is situated in a Gramscian understanding of the state-society relationship. This approach conceptualises development as a process of historically specific class-based and gender-based contestations over the distribution of resources that result in particular forms of socio-political orders maintained through a combination of institutional and ideological mechanisms of wealth generation. Our analysis of whose interests have been prioritised and marginalised in post-independence Timor-Leste is based on a systematic examination of three major factors: regulation of class relations, organisation of gender relations, and the governance of the petroleum industry. We conclude that despite some important improvements in the formation of formal democratic institutions in Timor-Leste, the processes of the distribution of power and access to resources remain far from being inclusive prioritising a class-based group of male-dominant elites that manipulates institutions to advance their interests and use a hegemonic gender ideology to justify and maintain these existing unequal arrangements in the prevailing socio-political order. Thus, the development outcomes in Timor-Leste are strongly connected to the political-economic processes from a larger historical perspective.