Neoliberal Accommodation and the Case of Bolivia

This paper describes the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bolivia for the year 1997. Three distinctive features render the SAM a useful starting point for distributional analyses. First, production in the agricultural and services sector is split up into formal and informal activities to account for the fact that poverty is largely confined to the latter. Second, factor and household accounts exhibit a high level of disaggregation, thus permitting the monitoring of the factorial and personal income distribution. Finally, the SAM contains a detailed system of accumulation balances which reveals the distribution of assets among household groups.

Chapter 5 focuses on a different pathway and the case of Bolivia. Bolivia makes a unique case given its history of social protest against economic measures associated with the IMF and World Bank. This history contributed to the lack of economic dominance and relatively high social expenditures. Closer historical examination however, shows that the quality of social expenditures on services such as health, education, and employment have not worked to alleviate inequality. Instead, as globalisation and an economy centred on neoliberal accommodation has persisted, economic and gender inequalities have persisted as well. Transnational corporations play a large role in extractivist industry, and Bolivia remains reliant on their foreign capital. Such actions often come at the expense of indigenous communities. Furthermore, various Bolivian governments over time have not been successful in addressing corruption. Altogether, this situation has spurred migration and relatedly, human trafficking. Anti-trafficking initiatives in the country have focused on law enforcement and stricter border controls. However, regulating and restricting migrant’s movements often has had the indirect effect of making them vulnerable to human trafficking and undermining the protections available to them in their destination country.

Two previous articles proposed and validated a continuous measure of the material standard of living as concerns basic household infrastructure (housing, water, energy and sanitation). The scale is based on Principal Component Analysis of a large number of variables derived from census questions, and was applied to the case of Bolivia using the 2001 Population Census. The Household Infrastructure Measure (HIM) is a linear combination of household factor scores for all factors extracted from a set of relevant census variables, weighted by each factor's contribution to accounting for variance in those variables. This paper explores change over time in the quality of household infrastructure as measured by the proposed scale. For this purpose several problems are addressed, including adaptations in the scale to manage differences in census questionnaires over time, and adoption of a common origin and unit of measurement for the measures computed at various dates. The findings are applied to the case of Bolivia, assessing change in the material standard of living of Bolivian households through the three latest population censuses (1976, 1992 and 2001), in relation to the main geographical divisions, major socioeconomic groups, and key population characteristics of the country. JEL codes: C43, C81, I31, I32

Part I Global poverty and macro-economic reform: the globalization of poverty policing countries through loan conditionalities the global cheap labour economy. Part II Sub-Saharan Africa: Somalia - the real causes of famine economic genocide in Rwanda. Part III Asia: India - the IMF's indirect rule Bangladesh - under the tutelage of the aid consortium the post-war economic destruction of Vietnam. Part IV Latin America: debt and democracy in Brazil IMF shock treatment in Peru debt and illegal drug economy - the case of Bolivia. Part V Eastern Europe: the Third Worldization of the Russian Federation

Privatization by Capitalization : The Case of Bolivia - A Popular Participation Recipe for Cash-Starved SOEs

Nowadays the broadband is not only a technological trigger but also an economic driver. So this document shows the actual Bolivian situation taking account infrastructure, Information, Communication Technologies penetration, broadband access costs, type of population and regulation issues. We highlight the needing for backbone network deployed with fiber optic to localities with population greater than 2000. For access networks issue we put special attention on FTTx technologies for capital cities because of density population and demand by people, also it is important the regulation law for infrastructure sharing. For increase demand a CDN is very important for keep staying local traffic inside the country.

The Informal Sector in Latin America - From Underground to Legality, V.E. Tokman. Part 1 Informality and Illegality: Informality and Ilegality, A False Identity - The Case of Bolivia, R. Casanovas Illegality in the Urban Informal Sector of Mexico City, N. Elizondo. Part 2 The Cost of Legality: Barriers to Legality and Their Costs for the informal Sector, R.A. Lagos Real vs. Ideal and the Brazilian Jeitinho - Microenterprise Registry Under the New Microenterprise Statue, J.W. Looye The Costs of Becoming Legal for Informal Firms - the Case of Venezuela, V. Cartaya. Part 3 Regulation and Informality: Protection for the Informal Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean by Social Security or Alternative Means, C. Mesa-Lago The Taxi Market in Chile - Regulation and Liberalization, 178-1987, M. Schkolnik Consequences of the Legal and Regulatory Framework in Peru's Taxi Market, E. Chavez.

In recent decades, decentralisation - the transfer of functions, responsibilities and financial resources to lower levels of government - has become quite a common element of public policy in developing countries. The implementation of decentralisation policies is often driven by economic motives. By transferring responsibilities to lower levels, planning in public policy can become more effective and public funds can be allocated more efficiently. Furthermore, decentralisation is believed to have a positive impact on public policy because projects implemented by lower levels of government are more responsive to local development-related demands. However, many authors also point to the limitations of the local level to generate local development: the capacity to generate external funds is often limited and the executed projects tend to focus on the social sector. This is often the case in relatively small rural municipalities.KeywordsLocal GovernmentLocal DevelopmentLocal Economic DevelopmentNational FundSocial SectorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The Andean Region is presently engulfed in a profound crisis of unpredictable consequences. Colombia is just the tip of the iceberg within an enormous ice floe of problems, the manifestations of which have been accumulating for some time and for which solutions have been postponed. In fact, since the 1990s and now at the beginning of the twenty—first century, the Andean region has become the major focus of instability and continental concern. On the human rights front, and in comparison with any other region of the Americas, the Andean area is where rights are most systematically violated—Colombia is the most dramatic case in point. As far as drugs are concerned, the Andes is the major area of cultivation, processing and trafficking of coca on the continent, and the five countries (together with Mexico) are the key actors in the illicit narcotics trade. In terms of corruption, some of the countries with the highest levels in the world are to be found in this area; the cases of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela underline the point.

The case of Bolivia is examined separately from the other cases given its parallels with the four other countries examined thus far. Bolivia, like Peru and Colombia, was governed for well over a decade by different neoliberal/globalist governments that involved its military in an internal security mission, specifically suppressing coca growers and various anticapitalist globalization movements. They also made progress in reducing military prerogatives over the defense ministry and defense budgets, as well as in the development of security strategies. However, like Ecuador and Venezuela, Bolivia’s military contained important nationalist/populist factions within its ranks as well as powerful anti-capitalist globalization social movements resisting the policy dictates and influence of neoliberal policy coalitions. The Bolivian military has for decades been internally divided over governmental policies and civil-military reforms, with factions orienting around specific rightist/conservative parties promoting neoliberalism or others developing alliances with campesino movements and indigenous struggles. The struggle of these movements culminated with the successful presidential election of Evo Morales, a coca grower activist and vocal critic of capitalist globalization.

Family farming is very important because it is, among other types, the principal source of food and employment, especially in developing countries. Given the constant changes in the agrarian structure and environment, what are the prospects of family farming under current conditions in South America? To answer this question, we have chosen three countries from this continent: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Based on a literature review of case studies in each country, a comparative analysis of the following topics was carried out: purpose of family farming, production unit, and agricultural production, integration with the market, income, and food security. Many similarities were found in the studied countries, which allow for some generalizations in certain aspects related to the studied cases. Family farming is largely moving to the rhythm of the markets. Its transition from a condition of subsistence to commercial status depends mainly on the availability of sufficient resources for production: mainly land, labor, and financial capital. The scarcity of these resources is forcing farming families to seek other sources of income or to migrate. The monetization of farming is increasing.

This paper studies the impact of natural resource extraction in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) from a number of angles. First, we exploit a novel dataset on the universe of giant oil and gas discoveries in the region to trace out the cyclical response of macroeconomic variables to discoveries over the short- and medium-run. Second, we use non-stationary panel data techniques to look at the long-run (trend) relationship between GDP per capita and the value of oil and gas production—our results imply that the recent fall in prices could depress GDP per capita by several percentage points. Last, we use Bolivia, which discovered huge gas reserves in the late 1990s, as a case study to apply the cross-country results and to study the impact of discoveries at the subnational level.

Reviewing some of the concepts that have been exposed by scholars and actors regarding International Investment Law and its relationship to the international oil and gas industry presents a framework of particular interest to legal writers, lawyers and companies with a focus in Latin America in view of the recent events in the oil and gas industry. Many of the decisions and events which took place in some of the continent’s countries between 2006 and 2009 may be considered as a backward movement in the pendular effect which affects energy scenarios. In such a context, the Energetic Populism or Resource Nationalism that showed strong signs in Latin America in recent years may be more blatantly identified in some countries but also in fractured decisions and underlying trends in others. In the multitude of existing definitions of such recurrent nationalism, one can single out the ‘nations wanting to make the most of their endowment’, but also identify an ideological bias that defends the strengthening of the role of State in the economy.1

This paper studies the impact of natural resource extraction in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) from a number of angles. First, we exploit a novel dataset on the universe of giant oil and gas discoveries in the region to trace out the cyclical response of macroeconomic variables to discoveries over the short- and medium-run. Second, we use non-stationary panel data techniques to look at the long-run (trend) relationship between GDP per capita and the value of oil and gas production—our results imply that the recent fall in prices could depress GDP per capita by several percentage points. Last, we use Bolivia, which discovered huge gas reserves in the late 1990s, as a case study to apply the cross-country results and to study the impact of discoveries at the subnational level.

This chapter evaluates risk, social vulnerability and industrial hazardousness in Bolivia applying the methodology described in Chapters 3 and 4. As well as presenting aggregated risk results at the departmental level, it provides a more detailed analysis for the municipalities of Santa Cruz and Sucre. The results show high levels of both vulnerability and industrial hazards, especially in the departments with highest economic development. The chapter also draws attention to the need for developing urban planning actions oriented towards a positive evolution of the management of these hazards.