Alternative Paradigms of Development in State Politics and Policy Making in the Global South: An Introduction

The global recognition of local/indigenous alternatives

In many parts of the Global South, locally rooted, indigenous – or indigenised – cultural conceptualisations have become key denominators in state politics and policy-making processes.

This is an interesting fact in itself, since many of these alternative concepts arising from grassroots social movements, indigenous activists and radical decolonisation scholars articulate a fundamental criticism at existing state structures, at the dominant economic systems, and at the notion of development. In all their multiplicity, they articulate profound questioning of continuities of coloniality and global capitalism. Against this background, this special issue discusses histories, discourses and practices of alternative paradigms of development in state politics and policy-making processes in the Global South. It focuses on cultural politics within state formation processes, including governmental discourses and such governing tools as legislation, policies, state programmes, and projects.

The attempt to draw on local cultural traditions and indigenous practices as source of resistance has a long history. It was practised by colonised peoples in their struggle against their colonisers and colonial exploitation. In Latin America, the struggle of indigenous people against Spanish colonial rule and – after independence – against domestic elites of Spanish descent is well documented (Mamani Rámirez, 2012; Ranta, 2014). In different parts of Africa and Asia, decolonisation processes and independence movements drew their political rhetoric on locally rooted concepts, such as ujamaa in Tanzania and harambee in Kenya. The Indian independence movement built on the local concept of swaraj (self-rule). The reference to ubuntu played a decisive role in the post-Apartheid reconciliation process in South Africa in which it was used to build up a sense of common postcolonial identity, belonging and sovereignty. In the 1990s and 2000s, indigenous or indigenised types of organising in Latin America unfolded a specific dynamism and served as political and strategic resource for movements against neo-liberal state policies and economic globalisation (Ranta, 2018; Zibechi, 2010). Some of these movements, in alliance with other popular sectors, managed to form a political project, take over state power in electoral processes and – through comprehensive institutional reform – succeeded in enshrining concepts like buen vivir/vivir bien in state constitutions. In Latin America, Bolivia and Ecuador could use the political and geostrategic space which opened with the so-called Left Turn in Latin America and took up a most ambitious project. They were not only embarking to a fundamental transition of the national economies, but – through concrete projects like the Yasuní initiative in Ecuador or Bolivia's refusal to agree to insufficient climate targets in Cancún in 2010 – both countries provoked repercussions beyond their national or continental boundaries, challenged international governance structures, and became points of reference for global social movements in their search for alternatives to growth- and corporate-driven, neo-liberal globalisation.

Finally, local and indigenous alternative concepts became even more widely discussed and recognised on a global scale in the wake of the global crisis, which started in 2007/2008 as a financial crisis, followed by a global economic downturn and by the European debt crisis. This crisis, which was also analysed as ‘multiple crisis’ (Demirović et al., 2011) – a convergence of an ecological crisis, an economic crisis, as well as a crisis of social reproduction and political representation – exposed the fragility and un-sustainability of the current global economic system and the need for fundamental alternatives. Moreover, through the debate on the Sustainable Development Goals, the concept of sustainability received global recognition and – at least discursively – was increasingly linked to local and indigenous alternative discourses (Brand, 2016; Escobar, 2011; Vanhulst and Beling, 2014). The government of Thailand, for example, used its chairmanship of the G77 in 2016 to promote a South–South dialogue on local and indigenous alternative development concepts, with the idea that the Thai Buddhist-inspired concept of sufficiency economy – together with other alternative concepts – was a tool to achieve the SDGs (Inter Press Service, 2016; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2017).

Despite the recent official recognition and despite the official commitment of the G77 to a South–South dialogue, however, radical local and indigenous alternatives have largely stayed on the agendas of global and local social movements and NGOs rather than on the agendas of multilateral development agencies or mainstream Western donor countries.

Deepening global crisis

To add to that: as it seems, political processes which used to be dubbed as Left Turn in Latin America are reversed in many countries. In those countries, where buen vivir/vivir bien was strongest – Bolivia and Ecuador – lighthouse projects like the Yasuní Initiative have been cancelled and under the pressure of falling prices for raw material, governments are increasingly relying on extractivism to create state income which is needed for social programmes. In many countries, ambitious post-extractivist visions seem to have been sacrificed in favour of more conventional neo-extractivist developmental projects (Acosta 2013; Brand et al., 2016; Gudynas, 2016; McNeish, 2013; Ranta, 2016, 2017). The role of South–South cooperation – especially China – has been instrumental in intensifying the exploration and exports of natural resources. Indigenous lands and territories and ecologically fragile areas are suffering most from the impacts of intensifying progressivist neo-extractivism. Politically, concepts such as buen vivir or vivir bien are being used to legitimise state-led developmentalism, to silence criticism and to narrow spaces for civil society. Consequently, Radcliffe (2015, p. 861) has suggested that the introduction of buen vivir/vivir bien to state politics has not been able to produce meaningful political-economic transformations in terms of challenging growth-based development thinking and practice. Countries propagating postdevelopment policies are caught in complicated articulations with the ‘real-politik of postcolonial states’ (Radcliffe, 2015, p. 861), inscribed with deeply ingrained inequalities and little room to manoeuvre in the global political economy.

Outside Latin America, this tendency can also be observed. In Asia, a strong commitment to alternative concepts can be found in Mongolia, with its constitutional support of pastoral nomadism as a strategy not only to deal with the effects of climate change but also as means to overcome carbon-based unsustainable mode of economy (Gertel, 2015; Stolpe, 2015). In Thailand, the notion of sufficiency economy draws on Buddhist concepts of moderation, a critique of consumerism and harmony with nature. In Bhutan, state support for the concept of Gross National Happiness goes even further: all laws and state policies are being cross-checked for their compatibility to the Gross National Happiness, to the extent that Bhutan decided against membership to the WTO because it would undermine principles of GNH (Ura, Alkire and Zangmo, 2012; Wangdi, 2010). Yet, in Thailand and Mongolia, the official commitment to non-growth-centered paradigms is overshadowed by, for example, the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) (Schaffar 2018) – a mega-infrastructure project, which may well count as the largest infrastructure project ever planned and dwarfs all previous development plans. It owes its attractiveness to the promise of new growth, through better connectivity, bigger markets and more consumption (Hoering, 2018). BRI, which thrills contemporary development imaginaries is very much the opposite of a local and indigenous concept and there are signs that, in its present shape, will be leading to a second great acceleration¹ (Will et al., 2015) – a new cycle of aggressive exploitation of natural resources with the potential to lead to a fatal aggravation of the current crisis. In Thailand, the critique can be pushed even further. While the present military government aspires to link up to the new Chinese high-speed train network, it uses the concept of sufficiency economy to preach modesty to the poor population and silence all political opposition (Schaffar and Ziai, 2018).

Towards a critical analysis of local/indigenous alternatives

Obviously, the general global recognition of the need of radical alternatives on the discursive level coincides with the direct opposite on the level of concrete politics: accelerated growth-oriented mega-infrastructure programmes, oftentimes implemented in authoritarian and repressive ways. How can we explain the problems indigenous local alternatives encountered?

One line of analysis regards the rise of indigenous alternatives in Latin America as dialectic processes. Crises – colonial assault, neo-liberal globalisation – leads to grave social and economic problems, but also induces/triggers local resistance and a renaissance of indigenous consciousness. As these movements are getting stronger, they manage to take over the state, but – through various processes of incorporation and cooption – inevitably get compromised. The sociology of organisations (Michels, 1962) provides us with strong concepts for understanding how such cooption results from structural conditions of state bureaucratic organisations. Along these lines, Beling et al. (2018) points to the fact that the mainstream development industry has successfully incorporated and compromised criticism: the debate concerning the limits of growth was reconciled with growth-led development concepts via the notion of sustainability, radical criticism at economy-centered development concepts were incorporated into the mainstream discourse through the notion of Human Development (Beling et al., 2018). Are indigenous and local radical alternatives then simply the next turn of the cycle?

The urgency of the global crisis – the fact that humanity is facing existential threats – sets the stage where a simple return to business-as-usual is impossible. Devastating effects of the present growth-led economic paradigm are the limits which make it impossible to overcome the present crisis by kicking off a new growth cycle. Against this background, it is clear that there are profound changes ahead of us – a transition towards fundamentally different economic, social, political systems, a transition which is likely to be of Polanyian scale, which will happen ‘by design or by disaster’ (Reißig, 2011). This also puts the academic endeavour to study local indigenous alternatives into a new light, and forces us to re-consider the methodological and theoretical foundations of our work – including a critical consideration of our position as researchers.

The articles of this special issue are based on extensive fieldwork and zoom in to the contested histories, discourses and practices through which alternative paradigms of development have been inscribed in state politics and state formation processes. They present case studies of social movement strategies vis-à-vis state-imposed cultural projects. Through multidisciplinary scholarship, this special issue sheds light on why and how have cultural conceptualisations become major denominators in state politics and policy making in many parts of the global South. Furthermore, it examines how these cultural notions are defined conceptually and discursively and how they are portrayed in legislation, policies and/or political rhetoric of the state.

In her contribution on ‘State Governance and Micropractices of Power in the Process of Decolonizing the State in Bolivia’, Eija Ranta focuses on bureaucratic routines and analyses contested processes of implementation on the way to overcome colonial state structures through the new orientation at vivir bien principles. Wolfram Schaffar in his article on ‘Alternative Development Concepts and Their Political Embedding: The Case of Sufficiency Economy in Thailand’ analyses how the concept of sufficiency economy was co-opted by Thai elites and turned into a tool of oppression. Alexandra Heis addresses the same process in her contribution on ‘Strategic Alliances or What Alternative? The Bia Kud Chum and Community Culture in Thailand’. She zooms in to a specific project and analyses how a radical local alternative was contained through repression and co-option into a state project. In her contribution on ‘The Common Destiny Framework, Citizenship and Customary Governance in Kanaky/New Caledonia’ Cadey Korson analyses the construction of a discursive frame which opens opportunities for a decolonisation of new Caladonia, but also sets limits to possible imaginaries. Stephan Peter Sonnenberg and Dema Lham address the establishment of a law school in Bhutan as a case study on how state building is being planned in a country with a strong commitment to its local alternative concepts of Gross National Happiness. In their contribution ‘But Seriously Now … Lawyers as Agents of Happiness? The Role of the Law, Lawmakers, and Lawyers in the Realization of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness’ they analyse the potential but also the challenges of imagining legal institutions as change agents. The discourse on environmentalism is in the centre of Rickard Lalander and Maija Merimaa's article on ‘The Discursive Paradox of Environmental Conflict: Between Ecologism and Economism in Ecuador’. They address the contestation between different interpretations of ecologism and environmentalism in public discourse as part of the contested policy-making processes in Ecuador under contemporary governments.

What connects all contributions is that they are focusing on state politics and policies, asking what kinds of political goals are promoted through cultural concepts and what kinds of political purposes do indigenised notions legitimise. Ultimately, the articles investigate how alternative development paradigms are used in bureaucratic practices of the state, and what kinds of contestations and power struggles emerge around them between and amidst the state and social movements. Addressing transformation processes of the state, the articles also touch on an eminent issue for future research: global transformations not only happen under the impact of and as a reaction to an ecological and economic crisis. It happens in times when more and more countries shift towards authoritarian modes of governance and democracy is under pressure. The examples of state transformation and decolonialisation which are under examination in this special issue also shed light on the fragility of these processes and the need of inclusive and democratic procedures.

Notes on contributors

Eija Ranta is university lecturer in development studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland, and an associate researcher at the Centro Latinoamericano de Ecologí a Social (CLAES), Uruguay. She holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Helsinki. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on decolonizing political alternatives, development policy-making, and state formation processes in Bolivia and Kenya. Her most recent book with the title “Vivir Bien as an Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization” was published at Routledge 2018. For more information: https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/portal/en/person/emranta

Wolfram Schaffar served as professor for development studies and political science at the Department Development Studies, University of Vienna until May 2018. Prior to this position he has been working at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, as well as at the Department of International Relations, Yangon University, Myanmar. His focus of research is on the state and state theory in the South, human rights and development, processes of democratisation as well as new authoritarianism. For more information: https://ie.univie.ac.at/institut/mitarbeiterinnen/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/wolfram-schaffar/

Notes

¹We owe this concept of a ‘second great acceleration’ to discussions with colleagues at the Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Science (BOKU), Vienna.