Rearticulating the State through Governmental Regimes: State Power and Popular and Indigenous Participation in Ecuador 2008-2012

This dissertation is a study of the processes of state formation and reproduction in Ecuador between 2008 and 2012. In particular, it analyzes three specific areas of state formation: first, the formation of narratives about the state seeking to legitimize its presence in society. More specifically, it analyses how the state incorporates narratives emerging from indigenous peoples’ worldviews into the state apparatus and the ways in which these enter in tension with “developmentalist” narratives. Second, it investigates the various ways in which the state apprehends, organizes, distributes and ultimately creates specific fields of intervention in the area of participatory planning; and third, the ways in which the state exercises different and complementary modalities of state power in the government of participation popular movements, particularly the indigenous movement. This dissertation’s general argument is that the state reproduces itself by creating spaces where it can legitimately intervene in society. Moreover, it contends that the Ecuadorian state has reconfigured and strengthened its presence in society through a combination of modern techniques of power rooted on a technocratic, knowledge-intensive form of government as well as disciplinary techniques of rule based on the correction and reformation of particular populations. In this sense, this dissertation posits that there is a governmental effort to “technify” and depoliticize participation in order to make it more governable, and that popular participation outside of the state is met with disciplinary acts.