Cutting through the Celeste Haze: A Counterfactual Analysis of the Determinants Drug Policy Reform in Uruguay

• In Event: Public Policy Making

Abstract

In 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legally regulate cannabis from seed to smoke. This was a puzzling development, a majority of Uruguayans rejected change whereas President José “Pepe” Mujica surprisingly championed it, and has been the subject of a growing body of literature. Yet, half a decade on, there is little agreement about the determinants of drug policy reform. Structural factors, such as Uruguay’s secularity, tradition of progressive reforms or the normalization of cannabis, contingent factors, such as drug-related insecurity or international drug policy debates, and, actors and their activities, such as President Mujica’s personal leadership or the cannabis movement’s mobilization, have been advanced as central. Although several authors incorporate different variables and scrutinize their complex interactions, insufficient engagement with the rest of the literature and rival hypotheses, thus far, has resulted in limited progress towards adjudicating between different explanations and settling disagreements. Hence, it is high time to critically and conceptually assess the different hypotheses advanced by the scholarship on Uruguay’s cannabis reform. The paper does so by bringing together, for the first time, journalistic narratives, gray literature accounts and scholarly analyses published in Spanish, English, French and German. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and leveraging counterfactual analysis, the paper cuts through the haze to assess the determinants of policy change, thereby contributing towards establishing a clearer picture of the determinants drug policy reform in Uruguay.

Author

• Jonas Von Hoffmann, University of Oxford