The political institutionalization of the social economy in Ecuador: Indigeneity and institutional logics

How differing social economy traditions within the global South can combine with state and market sectors to provide alternative development paths has increasingly become a focus of political and policy debate. This paper uses an institutional logics perspective to analyse the interaction between indigenous collective traditions and other institutional logics in Ecuador’s social economy. Results demonstrate how indigenous practice has interacted with other social economy elements to produce novel organizational and institutional forms. Findings from original primary research identify processes of co-existence, accommodation and conflict in the interaction of differing institutional civil society, state and market logics and the institutionalization of the social economy. Critically, processes of conflict generated by contradictory logics have over time helped close down many of the new political spaces, limiting the ongoing inclusion of indigenous institutions and the ability to construct an alternative, pluralistic path to development.