Environmental Engineering Reference
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political process are fundamentally intertwined, our main focus is to lay an empiri-
cally informed groundwork for understanding exactly which changes have taken place
under the rubric of nationalisation. By focusing on property rights, the chapter there-
fore takes an analytical step backwards from the prevailing debates on nationalisation,
its relationship with populism or its role in setting a new path to post-neoliberal devel-
opment policies. Building on this observation, the aim of this study is to analyse the
changes taking place in Bolivia and Ecuador by focusing on the changing property
rights structures concerning minerals. We do so by scrutinizing crucial aspects of rele-
vant laws and regulations in terms of the changing role of the state and its relationship
with society and nature.
The next section of the chapter provides a brief overview of the Left Turn in
Latin America, highlighting the nature and significance of the changes taking place
in Bolivia and Ecuador. The chapter then turns to a discussion of nationalisation
and property rights, introducing Ostrom and Schlager's (1992) analytical framework,
which forms the basis of the two empirically-grounded sections on the changes taking
place in Bolivia and Ecuador. The concluding section returns to the question asked
on the previous page (what is 'nationalisation'?) and presents a set of reflections
on how to theorise nationalisation in the context of the Left Turn in Bolivia and
Ecuador.
7.2 THE LEFTTURN IN LATIN AMERICA
The turn to the left that marked Latin American politics in the last decade comprises
political changes in a number of countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela.
By its nature, this turn includes a diverse range of countries and political positions;
consequently the meaning of this political shift is vague and this diversity has been
articulated in different ways. In this sense, administrations have been divided into
populist or social democratic (e.g. Castañeda 2006; cf. Cameron 2009), and a rich
body of literature has developed on the significance of the turn (e.g. Meschkat 2008;
Cameron and Hershberg 2010; Latin American Perspectives May 2010; Latin Amer-
ican Perspectives July 2010; Burchardt and Wehr 2011; Escobar 2011; Levitzky and
Roberts 2011). Here we focus on developments concerning Bolivia and Ecuador, two
countries whose social movements have had a crucial influence on the domestic polit-
ical agenda in the past decade, not only at the societal but also at the state level. These
developments have seen both countries taking a plurinational character. In this sense,
the administrations of the two countries to some extent incorporated social demands
and have set themselves on paths to a radical rethinking of the means and goals of devel-
opment. Accompanying this ongoing process of reflection are changes to indigenous
people's rights and new - often profoundly different - proposals in terms of nature and
natural resources management. As a result, these two countries are often considered
to be proponents of alternative development models, articulated and enshrined in var-
ious policies and legal instruments, which are to be critically scrutinised by empirical
research and analysis (e.g. Lang and Mokrani 2012).
Bolivia offers a fertile ground for analysis, because the country has undergone deep
transformations especially after the intensified mobilisation of the social movements
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