Dismantling Comprehensive Forest Bureaucracies: Direct Access, the World Bank, Agricultural Interests, and Neoliberal Administrative Reform of Forest Policy in Argentina

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Sarah L. Burns - , University of Göttingen, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Author)
  • Lukas Giessen - , University of Göttingen (Author)

Abstract

By the end of the 1980s, Argentina was in the middle of a severe economic crisis. In 1991, the Deregulation Decree, which steered the political economy toward a new neoliberal policy, dismantled the Argentine National Forestry Institute (IFONA), an autonomous bureaucracy responsible for forests. The aim of this study is to analyze the influence the World Bank exerted on domestic forest policymaking and bureaucratic reform in Argentina. We selected the interventions of the World Bank in the Argentinian forest and agricultural policy that started in the early 1990s and still continues today. We use a qualitative case-study design building on content analysis of policy documents. The World Bank interventions through funding figured prominently, in the form of new forest laws that, as a whole, benefited plantation forests and regulated soy production expansion. This policy was found to be supported by a coalition of the World Bank, agricultural interests, and private landowners.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)493-508
Number of pages16
JournalSociety and Natural Resources
Volume29
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 2 Apr 2016
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0009-0009-5222-494X/work/176861724
ORCID /0000-0001-8229-9234/work/187084078

Keywords

Keywords

  • Agricultural coalitions, bureaucratic politics, IFONA, international forest regime complex