Journal of Law and Political Economy

This article examines the relationship between law and the expansion of forestry extractivism in southern Chile since the country’s neoliberal Constitution of 1980 was put in place, as well as the prospects of that relationship in the context of constitutional reform. It does so by focusing on the ideological and distributive functions of law as constitutive of forestry extractivism. The article shows how, through the ideology of the private/public divide, law attributes a subsidiary role to the State in shaping forestry extractivism, obscuring the fact that it has fostered this sector’s growth through land-use regulation and legal-economic entitlements such as tax benefits and subsidies. Moreover, it shows how legal institutions, specifically property and freedom of contract, have shaped and enabled processes of land concentration in the hands of a few large-scale companies that dominate the forestry sector, creating an imbalance in bargaining power to the detriment of peasants and small landholders. The article further argues that the ideology of the public/private divide has turned social and economic conflicts related to forestry expansion into matters between private actors that do not require State intervention, depoliticizing the actors’ subjectivities and deepening the unequal distribution of power. Finally, it reflects on the dynamics of forestry extractivism and its relationship to constitutional change beyond exceptional moments such as constitutional reform processes.