Contribution analysis of a Bolivian innovation grant fund: mixing methods to verify relevance, efficiency and effectiveness

We used contribution analysis to verify the key assumption in the intervention logic of an innovation fund in Bolivia directed to economic farmer organisations to develop value-added activities. We focused the research on three sub-components of the intervention logic: relevance of the farmer groups for local economic development, effectiveness of the fund in strengthening these group, and efficiency of the grant allocation mechanism. We used a case-based comparative analysis to assess effectiveness: improved market access for members, strengthened organisational capacities and the capacity to pay organisational costs. We showed that the grants to already well-endowed organisations were particularly unsuccessful

States Of Discontent

Latin America’s recent inclusionary turn centers on changing relationships between the popular sectors and the state. Yet the new inclusion unfolds in a region in which most states are weak and prone to severe pathologies, such as corruption, inefficiency, and particularism. The first part of the chapter outlines an argument, developed at more length elsewhere, regarding how “state crises” helped drive the consolidation of three distinct party system trajectories among the eight South American countries where the Left would eventually win power. The second part of the chapter argues that these trajectories differed in three ways that likely conditioned how the concomitant inclusionary Left turn unfolded in each case: the institutionalization of left-wing parties, the occurrence of state transformation via constitutional reform, and the level of state capacity. The discussion helps highlight the central role of the state and its pathologies in both driving alternative paths of political development and in conditioning the politics of inclusion. By putting the emphasis on the state and its pathologies, we can better consider not just the sources of sociopolitical exclusion but also the limits of sociopolitical inclusion

Las sendas abiertas en América Latina : aprendizajes y desafíos para una nueva agenda de transformaciones

En tiempos de golpes de Estado y de mercado, de guerras jurídicas y persecuciones a lideres políticos y sociales resulta indispensable construir alternativas de gobierno capaces de defender las conquistas sociales, la soberanía regional y la vida en democracia. Este libro ofrece un balance de los logros alcanzados por los gobiernos progresistas, nacionales y populares durante la primera década del siglo XXI, e identifica los aprendizajes que dejaron aquellas experiencias haciendo foco en tres grandes áreas temáticas: la económica-productiva-financiera, la agenda social y de ampliación de derechos teniendo especialmente en cuenta la agenda de género y la construcción del entramado de cooperación política e integración regional. Las sendas abiertas en América Latina reúne las clases dictadas por grandes referentes del campo político y académico que participaron de la Especialización en Procesos Políticos Latinoamericanos del Siglo XXI organizado conjuntamente por CLACSO, el Instituto Gino Germani de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Buenos Aires y la Universidad Metropolitana para la Educación y el Trabajo, bajo la coordinación de Daniel Filmus y Lucila Rosso