Introducing the Critical Minerals Policy (CRITPOL) Database

As states seek to secure critical minerals for energy and technological developments, they are confronted with difficult trade-offs, as they need to balance economic and security concerns on the one hand, and environmental and social concerns on the other. This raises a central yet understudied question: how do governments prioritize different policy goals and how do these priorities vary across countries and over time? This article introduces the Critical Minerals Policy (CRITPOL) Database, which includes more than 550 national and international policies on critical materials across 61 countries from 1970 to 2023. The dataset fills an important gap in International Political Economy research by providing researchers with a systematic, fine-grained stock take of the content, policy priorities, and governance approaches inherent in critical minerals policies. In this article, we describe the construction and coding of the dataset and map key variation in policy priorities across policy types, countries and over time. We then analyze how governments balance environmental, human rights and labor rights, geopolitical and security goals across their policies, and how these patterns have changed over time. The CRITPOL Database offers a novel empirical foundation for examining how states seek to reconcile competing rationales across their critical mineral policies under conditions of economic interdependence and geopolitical competition.