VOTEF: Voting for the future

Background

For countries in the global south, extractive industries can provide governments with a highway to economic development. However, in a unique and understudied phenomenon, seven local communities in Colombia have organised referendums as a result of which resource extraction has been halted altogether in their municipalities.

The objective of this project is to explain the role of referendums against extractive industries in articulating, or not, alternatives to extractivist development.

These referendums in Colombia can provide insight into the wider trend of plebiscite democracy (e.g. recent referendums in Catalonia and the UK) as supplement to institutional democracy (i.e. centralised, technocratic), in which casting a vote means more than endorsement or rejection of a particular project.

Research objectives

•    To examine the relationship between voting in a referendum and visions of development
•    To analyse the promotion of referendums as performances of resistance and sovereignty, reflecting sets of motivations, histories, and strategies aimed to achieve political goals
•    To chart the controversy in terms of discourses of the actors, including the use of information technologies and platforms.