Explaining diverse national responses to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in the Andes: What sort of politics matters?

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative originated in the international domain but can only operate if adopted at a national scale. This paper addresses how national political settlements and efforts to define the idea of “transparency” in line with particular interests, have led to diverse responses to EITI across three Andean countries: Peru (an early adopter), Colombia (a late adopter), and Bolivia (a non-adopter). We argue that national elites (in the state, private sector and civil society) have taken up EITI (or in Bolivia's case, rejected EITI) as part of a strategy to secure broader goals and to convey particular messages about the state of democracy and political priorities in their countries, including toward actors on the international stage. We conclude that the EITI, and the idea of transparency, are leveraged by national actors to meet domestic political goals and interests, even as these domestic political goals may also be intertwined with other international pressures and contexts. While EITI, and arguments over transparency, can affect the nature of the domestic political settlement, they do so primarily by helping deepen domestic political changes that are already underway and that were the same political changes that created the initial space for EITI.