Evolutionary governance in mining: Boom and bust in peripheral communities in Sweden

This study investigates the consequences of dramatic price fluctuations on the global iron ore market between boom and bust for the Swedish communities Kiruna and Pajala, located above the polar circle, in the years 2006-2018. It focuses on the impact of the Swedish state’s reorientation towards neoliberal policies that have entailed reduced state involvement in peripheral communities still dependant on heavy industry. This reorientation was manifested in the Mineral Strategy presented by the liberal-conservative government in 2013, in which the state was prescribed a role as facilitator of investment of foreign and private capital in the Swedish mining sector, but not as an active owner or developer of mining enterprises. The neoliberalisation of Swedish mining has established a fundamental conflict of interests between communities whose economic, social and cultural wellbeing depends on long-term state commitment, and the state whose main interests are aimed at global capital flows rather than the maintenance of industrial production in peripheral regions. This conflict remained latent as long as global mineral prices were high, but as boom turned to bust around 2012, it was activated in a way that highlighted asymmetric relations of power and economic development between the sparsely populated and resource-rich northern parts of the country and the densely populated south.