Dismantling Comprehensive Forest Bureaucracies: Direct Access, the World Bank, Agricultural Interests, and Neoliberal Administrative Reform of Forest Policy in Argentina | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
December 2016
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
AGRIS:US201600100289
Pages: 
493-508

By the end of the 1980s, Argentina was in the middle of a severe economic crisis. In 1991, the Deregulation Decree, which steered the political economy toward a new neoliberal policy, dismantled the Argentine National Forestry Institute (IFONA), an autonomous bureaucracy responsible for forests. The aim of this study is to analyze the influence the World Bank exerted on domestic forest policymaking and bureaucratic reform in Argentina. We selected the interventions of the World Bank in the Argentinian forest and agricultural policy that started in the early 1990s and still continues today. We use a qualitative case-study design building on content analysis of policy documents. The World Bank interventions through funding figured prominently, in the form of new forest laws that, as a whole, benefited plantation forests and regulated soy production expansion. This policy was found to be supported by a coalition of the World Bank, agricultural interests, and private landowners.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Burns, Sarah L.
Giessen, Lukas

Publisher(s): 

Routledge, Global publisher of quality academic books, journals & online reference

Routledge is the world's leading academic publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We publish thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide. Routledge is a member of Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.

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