Political Settlements, Natural Resource Extraction, and Inclusion in Bolivia

This paper forms part of a project investigating the relationships between political settlements and natural resource governance over the longue duree in four countries in Latin America and Africa. Specifically, it examines this relationship for the governance of minerals and hydrocarbons in Bolivia. This paper makes the following arguments. As a poor country with a relatively weak central state, Bolivia?s natural resources have served as a ?mechanism of trade? mobilised by competing interest groups to build coalitions in support of their particular projects and to secure the acquiescence of those who might contest their projects. In this way, natural resources are used to create political pacts and negotiate political settlements in which a dominant actor attempts to win over the opposition of those resistant to a particular vision of development and/or governance.