Pluralismo jurídico igualitario: il mandato costituzionale “inascoltato” nel modello boliviano di cooperazione intergiurisdizionale

Pluralismo Jurídico Igualitario: the “Unheard” Constitutional Command in the Bolivian Model of Interjurisdictional Cooperation

Abstract

Abstract: Pluralismo Jurídico Igualitario: the “Unheard” Constitutional Command in  the Bolivian Model of Interjurisdictional Cooperation – The aim of this article is to
reconstruct legal pluralism as a possible legal lingua franca for the Global South, by analysing a case study in its constitutional implementation. In recent years the attention of comparative legal scholarship has been increasingly drawn to the Latin American region, as a living laboratory for the development and enactment of legal pluralism. Even though on paper the recent Constitution of Bolivia is arguably the most progressive multicultural constitution ever written – expressly recognizing plurinationality, collective rights, legal personality of Mother Earth and varying degrees of administrative autonomy for indigenous communities – the
euphoric discourse that some observers have adopted must be tempered by analyzing the contradictions that have afflicted the implementation of this text on a political level, through the adoption of a most restrictive Law of Jurisdictional Demarcation. Most of these contradictory elements have affected the mechanisms of egalitarian legal pluralism, undermining the plurinational articulation of the State engineered at a discursive level in the constitutional text and substantially betraying this “unheard” constitutional command. These paradoxes deserve to be explored with more detachment to fully understand how legal pluralism can effectively be enforced inside a constitutional framework within the Global South.
Keywords: Global South; Comparative constitutional law; Legal pluralism; Plurinationality; Andean nuevo constitucionalismo.