Struggles for Social Control: The Andean State and the Organizational Challengers

• In Event: Political Science Education & Comparative Politics of Developing Countries 1 Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries Virtual Poster Session 1

Abstract

The latest commodity boom has served to finance one of the largest institutional growth processes in the history of Andean states. This growth, however, has not come hand in hand with an increase in the state’s social control. On the contrary, the commodity boom has also empowered state competitors – which I call organizational challengers – whose source of power is the development of informal governance systems that provide material benefits otherwise unattainable for the local population. I use the case of the largest small-scale and artisanal gold mining communities in rural La Paz, Bolivia and Madre de Dios, Peru to illustrate the patterns of action of organizational challengers. I argue that, by including both local citizens and local officials within their networks, these informal resource governance systems present a critical challenge for the consolidation of the central state’s authority. My study contrasts the strategies that Andean states in expansion adopt to bridge this organizational gap and their respective outcomes. The paper offers two contributions. First, contrary to institutionalist approaches, it shows that the inability of the state to assert social control all over its territory is not always a function of weak state capacity or violent counterpowers but often has to do with the organizational strength of non-state actors. Second, challenging assumptions about elite-dominated resource governance in commodity-driven economies, I show how informal actors and institutions from below impact national resource governance.

Author

• Zarai Toledo Orozco, Tulane University