GOVERNANCE FAILURE AND CITIZEN EXCLUSION: WHY SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS IN RESOURCE-RICH DEVELOPING ECONOMIES UNDERPERFORM

Despite global sovereign wealth fund (SWF) assets under management surpassing $15.5 trillion in 2026, resource-rich developing economies continue to operate funds that fail their most critical mandate: translating natural resource wealth into fiscal stabilisation, intergenerational savings, and citizen welfare. This failure was starkly evident during periods of global economic stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper argues that the critical determinants of long-term sovereign wealth fund growth, performance, and sustainability are most acute in developing economies, where governance deficits and institutional fragility are most pronounced. Adopting a qualitative conceptual research design grounded in a critical realist paradigm, the study conducts a systematic literature review of 127 sources across six major databases, analysed through Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis framework to identify theoretically grounded patterns in the extant sovereign wealth fund literature. Drawing on agency and stewardship theories, the analysis reveals six critical factors: governance frameworks, accountability mechanisms, transparency practices, investment strategies, deal-size capabilities, and strategic asset allocation models. Findings demonstrate that developing-economy sovereign wealth funds are systematically undermined by opaque governance structures, politically captured investment decisions, multidimensional accountability deficits, and the uncritical adoption of foreign institutional models ill-suited to local economic realities. The paper concludes that citizens, as the true residual claimants of sovereign resource wealth, remain structurally excluded from the governance architecture of the very funds established in their name. The study advances a citizen-centric, multi-level governance-performance model tailored to developing-economy sovereign wealth fund contexts, thereby filling a significant gap in extant frameworks. The paper recommends restructuring governance toward citizen and parliamentary oversight. Furthermore, adopt evidence-based investment strategies, scaling deal-size capacity through active management, and implementing mixed organic-inorganic growth funding structures