Kent Eaton

Backlash in Bolivia: Regional Autonomy as a Reaction against Indigenous Mobilization

In the 1990s, Bolivia’s indigenous population mobilized to claim new political roles, and in the process, directly challenged the privileged position of economic elites within national political institutions. In response, business associations in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most prosperous region, began to demand regional autonomy—in contrast to the demand for authoritarianism that characterized prior generations of business elites when confronted with threatening political change. After examining Santa Cruz’ past relationship with the national government, this article explores the challenges that led economic elites in the department to seek autonomy and the strategies that they have adopted in pursuit of this goal.

The Political Economy of Decentralization Reforms: Implications for Aid Effectiveness

This volume presents a preliminary framework designed to help international development partners consider the relevance of political economy issues for their programmatic support to decentralization and local government reform. The intention is neither to advocate decentralization in general or in any particular form, nor to presume or privilege any particular decentralization objective. Instead, the purpose is to document the potential value of better understanding how (primarily national and intergovernmental) political and institutional dynamics do or could affect the scope for realizing decentralization reforms aligned with commonly advocated service delivery, governance, and poverty reduction goals. The underlying premise is that systematic analysis of these issues can productively complement the dominantly technical diagnostic work typically carried out by development partners. Specifically, development partners can benefit from better understanding the practical significance of motives that drive politicians and bureaucrats to support or oppose reform at various stages of the decentralization process, from making an initial reform decision to detailed design and implementation. In addition, the framework addresses how these incentives can weaken, strengthen, or shift in response to changes in political and economic conditions that arise after reform begins. A general approach to conducting political economy of decentralization analysis is outlined, recognizing the need to tailor such analysis to the particular country context. This volume is based on literature reviews and knowledge derived from selected country experiences.

The Downside of Decentralization: Armed Clientelism in Colombia

In recent years, decentralization and regional autonomy measures have figured prominently in negotiations designed to end some of the worlds most important conflicts, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Reforms that shift powers to subnational units deserve the attention of those who are trying to promote security via institutional design, but the risks associated with these territorial reforms are considerable. When political and economic resources are transferred to subnational governments in the attempt to create meaningful access to the political system for former combatants, the great risk is that these same resources can be used to finance a continuation of the armed struggle instead. In response to the popularity of territorial reforms in many post-conflict settings, this paper sounds a cautionary note by evaluating the negative impact of decentralization on security in Colombia, site of Latin Americas longest and deadliest armed conflict. After analyzing the design decisions of reformers who hoped that decentralization would help end the conflict, I argue that decentralization in fact financed the expansion of armed clientelism by illegal groups on both the left and right. Thanks to the weakness of the police in much of the national territory, guerrillas and paramilitaries have been able to use decentralized resources to destabilize the state, limiting even further its monopoly over the use of force and creating what are in effect parallel states on the left and right.

Paradoxes of Police Reform: Federalism, Parties, and Civil Society in Argentina's Public Security Crisis

This article focuses on three central impediments to police reform in Argentina, each of which has generated an important, yet distinct, paradox. First, although advocates of federalism argue that police reform facilitates innovation, in practice, reform efforts at one level of government in Argentina have been sabotaged by officials at other levels of government. Second, although electoral pressures have pushed police reform onto the policy agenda, these same pressures have also obstructed reform efforts because politicians depend on illicit party-police networks for campaign financing. Third, despite copious evidence of police involvement in criminal acts, Argentina’s crime wave has energized conservative civil society groups whose demand for a heavy-handed response to crime has derailed the most promising attempts to restructure the police force.

Conservative Autonomy Movements: Territorial Dimensions of Ideological Conflict in Bolivia and Ecuador

After several decades of neoliberal dominance, during which even left-leaning presidents implemented or defended market reforms, Latin America in the first decade of the twenty-first century entered a period of greater ideological contestation. Since 2000 the debate between statist and market-oriented options has widened considerably, along with the introduction of more statist policies in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. As during earlier shifts in the 1930s and 1980s, the contemporary shift in development models is producing important political conflicts between ideological adversaries. Much more so than in these earlier periods, however, the conflicts generated by the current shift toward statism at the national level are unfolding along territorial lines. Unlike the twentieth century, when the search for effective development models was dominated by conflict between actors with national identities (such as labor federations and industrialists, presidents and legislators, military generals and national party leaders), understanding the resurgence of ideological conflict today requires closer attention to territorial conflicts between national and subnational actors. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Bolivia and Ecuador. Having monopolized control over most national political institutions, and having repeatedly demonstrated their dominance in national electoral contests, leftist presidents Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have faced their most significant opposition not at the national level but in the subnational regions of the east (Bolivia) and west (Ecuador). Specifically, these presidents have confronted the emergence of demands for territorial autonomy from each countrys most vibrant economic region: the eastern lowland department of Santa Cruz in Bolivia, and the western coastal province of Guayas in Ecuador. In contrast to the demands for indigenous autonomy that have emerged in Bolivia and Ecuador in roughly the same period of time, and that to date have received more scholarly attention, the demands for autonomy in Santa Cruz and Guayas occupy a very different position on the ideological spectrum. 1 Whereas indigenous autonomy movements defend communal models of governance, autonomy claims in Santa Cruz and Guayas focus on the defense of the market-based models that have produced significant economic gains for each subnational region in the past but are now under attack at the national level. In both Santa Cruz and Guayas, private sector entrepreneurs, business associations, and local politicians are the most powerful advocates of territorial 291

Recentralization and the Left Turn in Latin America: Diverging Outcomes in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela

Over the past decade, leftist presidents in Latin America have sought to recentralize authority by reversing the decentralizing reforms that swept the region in the 1980s and 1990s. This article explains why subnational opposition elites were able to resist recentralization in Bolivia, but not in Venezuela or Ecuador. I argue that opposition mayors and governors increase the chance of success against the president if they can transcend their interelite policy struggles with him and mobilize average citizens against recentralization. In Bolivia, the concentration of subnational opposition victories in eastern lowland departments, which share a common regional identity and dense organizational networks, enabled governors to enlist societal support in defense of decentralization, ultimately forcing compromise upon the president. In Ecuador and Venezuela in contrast, the diffusion of opposition jurisdictions foreclosed the possibility of encouraging societal opposition through appeals to common regional identities, allowing presidents to proceed with recentralization unchecked.

Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Abstract Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.

Latin America's Resurgent Centre: National Government Strategies after Decentralisation

This article identifies the ‘menu of options’ available to national governments as they seek to re-assert the centre’s prerogatives in the aftermath of decentralisation. These include policy strategies, bureaucratic strategies, institutional strategies and societal strategies, each of which has afforded opportunities for the centre to reclaim the role of protagonist that it lost as a result of decentralisation. Illustrated through the use of examples from across Latin America, our survey of these options shows that, short of outright recentralisation, national politicians and bureaucrats have been highly creative in their search for strategies to re-centre politics.

THE STATE Of THE STATE IN LATIN AMERICA: CHALLENGES, CHALLENGERS, RESPONSES AND DEFICITS

Entender al Estado en America Latina requiere entender los desafios y desafiantes que este enfrenta. El presente articulo sostiene que las tres transiciones principales de finales del siglo XX (es decir, la democratizacion, la liberalizacion y la descentralizacion) plantearon desafios especificos al Estado. Luego se utiliza el concepto de poder infraestructural para conceptualizar a los actores que estan desafiando al Estado, diferenciando entre aquellos que amenazan su poder territorial o su poder relacional. Virando el foco desde los desafiantes hacia las respuestas, el articulo identifica tres tipos de cambios diferentes (de politicas, institucional y de regimen) que los estados han adoptado para debilitar, acomodar o derrotar a los desafiantes. Por ultimo, el articulo resalta la dificultad de medir los deficits estatales en la America Latina de la post-descentralizacion.

Disciplining Regions: Subnational Contention in Neoliberal Peru

Abstract This article examines tensions between two governance trends that have impacted subnational regions across the global south in recent decades: liberalization and decentralization. Although both trends diminish the prerogatives of the central state, a shift in focus from national to subnational scales reveals important contradictions between the two trends. Through an in-depth examination of the Peruvian case, the article explores the scope for resistance to neoliberalism in subnational regions that have become politically empowered via decentralization. Pushed by their constituents, subnational elected officials have sought to contest and disrupt the neoliberal mining policies that were adopted by Alberto Fujimoris authoritarian government over two decades ago and that his successors have maintained in the years since re-democratization. The national government has responded to this opposition by defending neoliberalism from substantive challenges and by adopting new strategies to discipline subnational regions. These include not just attempts to weaken regional efforts at territorial regulation and to encourage corporate social responsibility by mining companies, but new tax programmes that invite the private sector to displace the state at the subnational level by playing direct roles in infrastructure and service provision.