Suchergebnisse

This paper focusses on participation in the main planning documents produced in Bolivia in the first decade of the 2000s: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the National Development Plan (PND). It is analyzed how these planning instruments have been able to capture popular participation through diverse mechanisms and how these practices fit in the current mainstream participation discourse. Special attention is paid to natural resources because of the predominant role they have in the Bolivian economy and because of their substantial contribution to the state budget. The Bolivian experience shows an apparent paradox: while the process leading to the PRSP followed participatory guidelines and the PND did not, the resulting PRSP failed to include the most pressing demands of social movements, while the PND succeeded in including them.

This article offers a reading of the ideas expressed in Walter Solón Romero Gonzales' mural, the 'History of Bolivian Petroleum' from 1956, and juxtaposes these ideas to the current public discourse that emerges from speeches of high officials and from policy documents of President Evo Morales' government. The objective is to investigate the understanding of the role natural resources vis-à-vis development in Bolivia at these two points in time and show the striking resonance between ideas depicted in the mural more than half a century ago and ideas expressed in contemporary official discourses. These ideas concern the foundational elements of a development model that envisions a central role for natural resources, and especially hydrocarbons, in the development of the country. The elements of this model, that include a prominent role of the state in the extraction of natural resources, expansive social policies, strategies to diversify the economy, neatly overlap with the central tenets of the neoextractivist model. It transpires that the novelty of neoextractivism can be fundamentally questioned. This model also provides the rationale justifying the promotion of extractive activities 'at all costs' in Bolivia and beyond. However, history has shown that it produces fantasies of development rather than actual development.

In this paper, we focus on participation in the main planning documents produced in Bolivia in the first decade of the 2000s: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the National Development Plan (PND). We analyze how these planning instruments have been able to capture popular participation through diverse mechanisms and how these practices fit in the current mainstream participation discourse. Special attention is paid to natural resources because of the predominant role they have in the Bolivian economy and because of their substantial contribution to the state budget. The Bolivian experience shows an apparent paradox: while the process leading to the PRSP followed participatory guidelines and the PND did not, the resulting PRSP failed to include the most pressing demands of social movements, while the PND succeeded in including them. This case shows how the articulation of political processes escapes simplistic characterizations and the application of 'out of the textbook' participation might result in highly exclusionary outcomes. It also shows that the voice of social movements can take unexpected paths and have a profound influence on political events that go well beyond the possibility of standardized participatory processes.

SUMMARY In this paper we analyze the Bolivian land reform within the general context of land reforms and then we look at how the Bolivian case could be better understood as a forest reform. First we discuss the 'standard' conditions for a successful land reform. Second we highlight that 'special' conditions apply to Bolivia. Next, we provide a synthesis of the discussion of the Bolivian government –in light of the points highlighted above– and show how the focus of the national authorities is centred on the standard conditions of land reform and how the issue of forest management is being neglected. We find that if land reform is carried out neglecting the forestry issue it might not solve the structural inequalities that characterize the Bolivian countryside and it is going to contribute to the problem of deforestation.

The paper discusses the prescription of EU environmental regulations for new member states. It has been argued that these countries should be allowed looser directives as a way to take into consideration their lower income levels and correspondingly different priorities. The paper estimates the determinants of environmental policies' stringency. We find that corruption levels are the most important factor in explaining the variance in environmental policies in the enlarged EU. Most notably, differences in corruption levels across countries appear to be more important than income differences. Thus, it is argued, lower environmental standards in new member states are not necessarily implied by lower income levels, but they are more likely to reflect low institutional quality. We argue that harmonization of environmental policies at the EU level can be a way to tackle this problem, and we provide a further rationale for new members states to adjust to existing EU environmental directives. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

A common finding of recent theoretical and empirical literature is that corruption has a negative effect on economic growth. In the paper, through growth regression analysis, we estimate the direct and indirect effects of corruption on economic growth. The indirect transmission channels, specifically investments, trade policy, schooling, and political stability, analysed in our study prove to be significant in explaining the deleterious effect of corruption on growth rates. We find that one standard deviation increase in the corruption index is associated with a decrease in investments of 2.46 per centage points, which in turn decreases economic growth by 0.34 per cent per year. The second, by importance, transmission channel is openness: a standard deviation increase in the corruption index is associated with a decrease of the openness index by 0.19, resulting in a decrease in economic growth by 0.30 percent per year. Jointly, the transmission channels explain 81 per cent of the effect of corruption on growth. While combating corruption is a long-term task, an understanding of the transmission channels, through which corruption affects the economy, may suggest ways to limit corruption's negative, but indirect, effects on growth.

A common finding of recent theoretical and empirical literature is that corruption has a negative effect on economic growth. In the paper, through growth regression analysis, we estimate the direct and indirect effects of corruption on economic growth. The indirect transmission channels, specifically investments, trade policy, schooling, and political stability, analysed in our study prove to be significant in explaining the deleterious effect of corruption on growth rates. We find that one standard deviation increase in the corruption index is associated with a decrease in investments of 2.46 per centage points, which in turn decreases economic growth by 0.34 per cent per year. The second, by importance, transmission channel is openness: a standard deviation increase in the corruption index is associated with a decrease of the openness index by 0.19, resulting in a decrease in economic growth by 0.30 percent per year. Jointly, the transmission channels explain 81 per cent of the effect of corruption on growth. While combating corruption is a long-term task, an understanding of the transmission channels, through which corruption affects the economy, may suggest ways to limit corruption's negative, but indirect, effects on growth.

Despite its widely recognized importance, electricity is not yet available everywhere, and there are many areas of the globe which still depend on alternative sources of energy such as wood, charcoal and kerosene. In contrast, the USA was the first country to be fully electrified. This article explores the current challenges faced by developing countries, presents the historical evidence from the USA and compares these experiences discussing the policy relevance of the comparison. Far from being a smooth process, the electrification process in the USA was a long and complex transition. The article analyses the challenges and policy responses that characterized the US electrification process. One of the outstanding features of these policies is that they are quite comprehensive and include subsidies and credit schemes, house ownership policies, mass media campaigns, the provision of adequate repair service and the direct involvement of women.

We survey and assess the empirical literature on the sources of corruption Thanks to the improved availability of data, we are able to produce an improved cross-country econometric model to test well-established and more recent hypotheses jointly. We do not find that the common law system, or a past as a British colony predicts corruption. Our results support cultural theories on the causes of corruption, and suggest that a medium-long exposure to uninterrupted democracy is associated with lower corruption levels, while political instability tends to raise corruption. Our results also suggest that the diffusion of newspapers helps to lower corruption levels.

One of the main features of contemporary development politics in Latin America is the prominent role of the state. Another feature is the intensification of natural resource extraction. This extractivist drive is especially pronounced in the countries that are part of the 'turn to the left', which have at the same time played host to alternative development approaches. While Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have become emblematic of these processes, their impact can be felt across much of the region. These changes have emerged within a particular context in which the electoral successes of the leaders in power have been underwritten by promises to eradicate what has been seen as the two cardinal sins of neoliberal policies: poverty and inequality. Eschewing aggressive redistribution, they have sought to achieve redistributive extractivism accompanied with largely expanded expenditure for social policies. An 'extractive imperative' was thus borne as natural resource extraction came to be seen simultaneously as sources of income and employment generation and financing for increased social policy expenditure. According to this imperative, extraction needs to continue and expand regardless of prevailing circumstances, with the state playing a leading role and capturing a large share of the ensuing revenues.

This paper introduces the special issue on the 'Extractive Imperative in Latin America'. It highlights the rise in conflicts over the intensification and deepening of extractive activities in the region, especially countries associated with the Left Turn. Given the nature of the extractive imperative, which results in an approach to development where more extraction emerges as the response to all internal and external challenges, this brief introduction also argues that these conflicts are set to continue and intensify even if commodity prices remain below their historic highs or if the progressive governments are voted out of office.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), launched in 2002, has been promoted as an international anti-corruption tool. Several empirical evaluations on the effectiveness of the EITI scheme provide average estimates based on cross-country analysis. However, little empirical work has been conducted on individual case studies, especially in the context of Latin America. Our study uses a Synthetic Control Methodology (SCM) to measure the EITI's impact on several measures of corruption in the first five Latin American countries to join the initiative: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago. The method allows us to assess the magnitude and statistical significance of the EITI's effect on perceived corruption at each stage of implementation. Our results cast doubt on how decisive the scheme has been in combatting corruption. In the vast majority of cases, participation in the scheme either had no statistically significant effect or even coincided with marginally increased corruption levels (only in very few cases it was associated with temporary minor improvements). Taken together, the results indicate that joining EITI did not lead to a substantial decrease of corruption in any of the countries under scrutiny.

The Texaco/Chevron lawsuit, which started in November 1993 and is still being litigated in 2020, is a prominent example ofthe process of judicialization of environmental conflict. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs claim that the oil company's operations generated ruinous impacts on the environment and on the development prospects and health of nearby individuals and communities. The tortuous and lengthy judiciary process was further hindered by an arbitration process, an Investor–State Dispute Settlement mechanism nested in the Ecuador—United States Bilateral Investment Treaty. The significance of the case goes beyond the specifics of Ecuador and provides further arguments fuelling the protracted legitimacy crisis experienced by International Investment Agreements. The current praxis of Investor–State Dispute Settlement mechanisms is generating an asymmetrical system, protectingthe interest of investors, and intruding intothe space of human and environmental rights. These issues are resonating with social movements, activist scholars and policy makers who are reacting to the vulnerabilities engendered by International Investment Agreements throu

Since the election of the left-leaning leaders Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador, there have been highly contested changes regarding the role of the state in the extractive industries of these countries. While the content of these changes differ and have manifested themselves over different timescales and political approaches, they fall within the context of the politically charged and equivocal rubric of 'nationalisation'. In both countries the place of extractive industries in socioeconomic development has been acknowledged as central to understanding the nature of the ongoing changes. While the existing literature has made sweeping generalisations about the character of these new regimes, this chapter aims to bring an empirically grounded analysis of the transformation of property rights structures associated with nationalisation in the extractive sectors of Bolivia and Ecuador. Focusing primarily on the minerals sector, the chapter demonstrates that there have been shifts and swings in the property rights regimes of both countries at the 'operational level'. While these changes have indeed strengthened the role of the state, hence conforming to our definition of nationalisation, the most significant changes relate to changes in property rights at the level of 'collective-choice' rights that concern the future shape of development in these two countries.