Subnational Contention in Neoliberal Peru

This chapter argues that, while ideological conflicts over the market in Peru have taken on a sharply territorial logic since the country’s neoliberal turn in 1990, subnational resistance to neoliberalism has been ineffective in the two dimensions conceptualized in this book. According to the argument developed in the first half of the chapter, capacity and coalitional constraints have undermined regional presidents in their attempts to build distinctive subnational policy regimes, including attempted uses of regional zoning authority to regulate mining in ways that would deviate from neoliberalism. The second half of the chapter then demonstrates how structural and coalitional constraints have negatively affected efforts by subnational officials to contest neoliberalism as the dominant national policy regime. Instead, a succession of Peruvian Presidents, including Alejandro Toledo, Alán García, and Ollanta Humala, have been able to overcome territorial resistance and defend the neoliberal reforms introduced in the 1990s by Alberto Fujimori.