IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v146y2021ics0305750x21002254.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From criminals to citizens: The applicability of Bolivia’s community-based coca control policy to Peru

Author

Listed:
  • Grisaffi, Thomas
  • Farthing, Linda
  • Ledebur, Kathryn
  • Paredes, Maritza
  • Pastor, Alvaro

Abstract

Between 2006 and 2019, Bolivia emerged as a world leader in formulating a participatory, non-violent model to gradually limit coca production in a safe and sustainable manner while simultaneously offering farmers realistic economic alternatives to coca. Our study finds that not only has this model reduced violence, but it has effectively expanded social and civil rights in hitherto marginal regions. In contrast, Peru has continued to conceptualize ‘drugs’ as a crime and security issue. This has led to U.S.-financed forced crop eradication, putting the burden onto impoverished farmers, generating violence and instability. At the request of farmers, the Peruvian government has made a tentative move towards implementing one aspect of Bolivia’s community control in Peru. Could it work? We address this question by focusing on participatory development with a special emphasis on the role of local organizations and the relationship between growers and the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, focus group discussions and secondary research, we find that for community controlto have any chance of success in Peru, grassroots organizations must be strengthened and grower trust in the state created. The study also demonstrates that successful participatory development in drug crop regions is contingent on land titling and robust state investment, which strengthens farmer resolve to participate so as to avoid a return to the repression of the past.

Suggested Citation

  • Grisaffi, Thomas & Farthing, Linda & Ledebur, Kathryn & Paredes, Maritza & Pastor, Alvaro, 2021. "From criminals to citizens: The applicability of Bolivia’s community-based coca control policy to Peru," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:146:y:2021:i:c:s0305750x21002254
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105610
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X21002254
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105610?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus McNelly, 2020. "Neostructuralism and Its Class Character in the Political Economy of Bolivia Under Evo Morales," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 419-438, April.
    2. Dest, Anthony, 2021. "The coca enclosure: Autonomy against accumulation in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    3. Pui-Hang Wong, 2016. "How can political trust be built after civil wars? Evidence from post-conflict Sierra Leone," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 53(6), pages 772-785, November.
    4. Edgar Salgado Chavez, 2018. "Growing Up in a War: The Shaping of Trust and Identity After Conflict in Peru," Working Paper Series 0618, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    5. Reyes, Luis Carlos, 2014. "Estimating the Causal Effect of Forced Eradication on Coca Cultivation in Colombian Municipalities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 70-84.
    6. Fontana, Lorenza B. & Grugel, Jean, 2016. "The Politics of Indigenous Participation Through “Free Prior Informed Consent”: Reflections from the Bolivian Case," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 249-261.
    7. repec:bla:devpol:v:23:y:2005:i:2:p:183-198 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Daniel Mejía & Carlos E. Posada, 2007. "Cocaine Production and Trafficking: What do we know?," Borradores de Economia 3955, Banco de la Republica.
    9. Wahid, Abdul & Ahmad, Muhammad Shakil & Abu Talib, Noraini Bt. & Shah, Iqtidar Ali & Tahir, Muhammad & Jan, Farzand Ali & Saleem, Muhammad Qaiser, 2017. "Barriers to empowerment: Assessment of community-led local development organizations in Pakistan," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1361-1370.
    10. Faguet, Jean-Paul, 2014. "Decentralization and Governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 2-13.
    11. Handberg, Øyvind Nystad, 2018. "No sense of ownership in weak participation: a forest conservation experiment in Tanzania," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 434-451, August.
    12. Heuser, Christoph, 2019. "The effect of illicit economies in the margins of the state – The VRAEM," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100341, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beatriz, Ramos & Benavides, Jean Paul & Vélez, María Alejandra & Jauregui, Gilda & Restrepo, David, 2023. "Control social de la coca: lecciones del Trópico de Cochabamba (Bolivia) para Colombia," Documentos de trabajo 1/2023, Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas (IISEC), Universidad Católica Boliviana.
    2. Thomas Grisaffi, 2022. "Why Is the Drug Trade Not Violent? Cocaine Production and the Embedded Economy in the Chapare, Bolivia," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(3), pages 576-599, May.
    3. Sauls, Laura Aileen & Dest, Anthony & McSweeney, Kendra, 2022. "Challenging conventional wisdom on illicit economies and rural development in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ladino, Juan Felipe & Saavedra, Santiago & Wiesner, Daniel, 2021. "One step ahead of the law: The net effect of anticipation and implementation of Colombia’s illegal crops substitution program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    2. Sauls, Laura Aileen & Dest, Anthony & McSweeney, Kendra, 2022. "Challenging conventional wisdom on illicit economies and rural development in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    3. José Fernández & Matteo Pazzona, 2015. "Evaluating the Spillover Effects of the Plan Colombia in Ecuador," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 15/667, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    4. Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo & Sandra V. Rozo, 2017. "On the Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Colombia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 570-594.
    5. Diego A. Martin, 2023. "The Impact of a Rise in Expected Income on Child Labor: Evidence From Coca Production in Colombia," Growth Lab Working Papers 217, Harvard's Growth Lab.
    6. Diego A. Martin, 2023. "The Impact of a Rise in Expected Income on Child Labor: Evidence From Coca Production in Colombia," CID Working Papers 150a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    7. Austin L. Wright, 2016. "Economic Shocks and Rebel," HiCN Working Papers 232, Households in Conflict Network.
    8. Kahsay, Goytom Abraha & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2020. "Leader turnover and forest management outcomes: Micro-level evidence from Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    9. Vasquez Escallon, Juanita, 2015. "When too much punishment decreases legality. The case of coca-reducing policies in Colombia," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113156, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Alberti, Federica & Mantilla, César, 2020. "Provision of noxious facilities using a market-like mechanism: A simple implementation in the lab," Working papers 35, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    11. María Orduz, 2022. "Effect of educational spending on academic performance under different institutional arrangements," Documentos CEDE 20224, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    12. van der Kamp, Denise & Lorentzen, Peter & Mattingly, Daniel, 2017. "Racing to the Bottom or to the Top? Decentralization, Revenue Pressures, and Governance Reform in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 164-176.
    13. Ali, Amin Masud & Savoia, Antonio, 2023. "Decentralisation or patronage: What determines government's allocation of development spending in a unitary country? Evidence from Bangladesh," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    14. Meadows, John & Annandale, Mark & Ota, Liz, 2019. "Indigenous Peoples’ participation in sustainability standards for extractives," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    15. Monastiriotis, Vassilis & Zilic, Ivan, 2020. "The economic effects of political disintegration: Lessons from Serbia and Montenegro," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    16. Mounu Prem & Juan F. Vargas & Daniel Mejía, 2023. "The Rise and Persistence of Illegal Crops: Evidence from a Naive Policy Announcement," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(2), pages 344-358, March.
    17. Fischer, Harry W. & Ali, Syed Shoaib, 2019. "Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 147-158.
    18. Vincent R. Nyirenda & Bimo A. Nkhata & Oscar Tembo & Susan Siamundele, 2018. "Elephant Crop Damage: Subsistence Farmers’ Social Vulnerability, Livelihood Sustainability and Elephant Conservation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-19, October.
    19. Jeremy Bowles & Benjamin Marx, 2022. "Turnover and Accountability in Africa's Parliaments," Working Papers hal-03873800, HAL.
    20. Paul Smoke, 2019. "Improving Subnational Government Development Finance in Emerging and Developing Economies: Towards a Strategic Approach," Working Papers id:13007, eSocialSciences.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:146:y:2021:i:c:s0305750x21002254. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.