Juridifying agrarian reform: the role of law in the reconstitution of neoliberalism in Bolivia

ABSTRACT In development studies, law is typically seen as a passive and neutral instrument through which development policy is effected. Using mid-1990s market-led agrarian reform in Bolivia as an example, this article reveals how certain logics internal to law have characterised an approach to development policy that reframes social concerns and political subjectivities and interaction in a way that advances neoliberal economic restructuring while curtailing opposition. This included the emergence of a depoliticised, dehistoricised, technocratised approach to agrarian reform that reconstituted peasants and Indigenous peoples as market actors formally equal to landowners, while limiting their opportunities for dissent and resistance.