Business conflict and pesticide risk regulation in Costa Rica: supporting data on laws and instructive events, 1998-2014

Abstract

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Regulation by impasse: Pesticide registration, capital and the state in Costa Rica

“…To account for the variety of actors and their relationships to the state, this paper adopts a strategic-relational approach (Jessop, 2008). Building on the work of state theorists Antonio Gramsci and Nikos Poulantzas, the strategic-relational approach offers systematic insights into state power as a social relation that mediates between class and political forces, themselves not taken as coherent but rather conjuncturally determined.…”

“…Explaining the long-standing registry reform process requires a deeper understanding of the struggles over the terrain of the state ‘as the site, the generator, and the product of strategies’ (Jessop, 2008: 35) of political economic and broader social forces. In what follows we divide our discussion into two parts.…”

“…Building on the work of state theorists Antonio Gramsci and Nikos Poulantzas, the strategic-relational approach offers systematic insights into state power as a social relation that mediates between class and political forces, themselves not taken as coherent but rather conjuncturally determined. ‘[T]he state is neither a unified subject nor a neutral instrument’, Jessop explains, ‘but rather an asymmetrical institutional terrain on which various political forces (including state managers) contest control over the state apparatus and its capacities’ (2008: 31, emphasis added). State power is not presumed to be wielded by authorities representing particular class interests; instead, state power is a problematic that is investigated to understand the changing balance of forces that shape its exercise.…”

“…Despite increased coordination among agrochemical interests, these efforts had failed due to stiff opposition not only from the ecologista movement, but also from officials in state agencies. It is precisely this kind of outcome that Jessop's strategic-relational approach helps to explain: the ability of particular class forces to pursue their interests ‘is not inscribed in the state system as such but in relation between state structures and the strategies different forces adopt towards it’ (2008: 36). Here, we explain the failure of the Phase 2 reforms and the emergence of a delicate consensus between the technical and political levels of the state and between the state and ecologista actors in Phase 3 as the result of two strategic-relational factors: first, disputes between and within the responsible ministries, and second, tensions over the boundary of the state itself.…”