The role of international transfer of tools for cannabis regulation in Uruguay

Abstract

In December 2013 Uruguay surprised the world by becoming the first nation to extensively regulate cannabis. Behind the approval of this law, an odd and conflictive combination of national civil society representatives, legislative and executive power, entrepreneurs and transnational networks, came together to make cannabis regulation happen. In this paper, I delve particularly into the role of international policy transference processes in two areas of the political process: policy design and political campaigning.

As path dependency theorists point out, once in place, institutions tend to persist. One political choice closes off alternative options, and leads to the establishment of institutions that generate self- reinforcing path dependent processes. In other words, regulating cannabis is as atypical as prohibiting it once legal. Therefore, knowing and understanding the point of origin of this controversial drug policy reform is crucial to understanding the dependent path. Within an international context increasingly sceptical about the cannabis prohibition orthodoxy, insights gained from this atypical change are quite relevant for policy-making, since the Uruguayan example might prove to be useful for policy learning across the globe.

The analysis of policy transfer mechanisms includes the intentional actions of significant actors who engage in a process by which “knowledge of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system (past or present) are used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system” (Dolowitz y Marsh, 2000, p. 5). In this regard, Bennett (1991) outlines four possible types: emulation, harmonization, elite networking and policy communities, and penetration. Only the last one entails a non-cooperative mechanism of transference involving the imposition of a particular political pathway by some powerful agent. Thus, emulation implies the deliberate use of lessons of a program used in another society, whereas harmonization concerns the efforts of intergovernmental organizations to develop processes of international integration to synchronize common policies. Finally, elite networking refers to the coordination of governmental and non-governmental actors, sharing information about a common problem and possible political solutions to it. Overall, the difference between these types is a matter of degree.

In order to expose the role of international actors in domestic policy processes, gaining access to the actual political debates and deliberations that precede decision-making and action taking is as crucial as difficult, as former studies about drug policy-making have shown. Political decisions are usually surrounded by secrecy and important incentives may exist for actors to either overemphasize or understate their own role in cannabis regulation, as well as some of the conflicts, collusions and agreements involved in the process. All of this points to the critical importance of ‘being there’ when analysing the Uruguayan cannabis regulation case.

Based on a seven year study of this political process (2007-2014), this qualitative case study locates participant observation as the main data collection method. Thus, I developed a significant network of around fifty participants –comprised of legislative power (n=eleven), executive power (n=four), judicial power (n=one) members, national civil society (n=sixteen), international civil society (n=thirteen) representatives and professionals (n=five)-, some of them based on long-term personal relationships with whom I kept regular contact throughout this process. Formal and informal interviews, participant observation and relevant documents were then cross-checked as data sources to enhance the findings’ robustness.

Some examples of policy transfer found involved the emulation of regulation and public campaigning practices from the US states of Washington and Colorado, and also Spain. Some of these processes were directly sponsored by the government, whereas others were bottom up, led by civil society and cannabis growers’ organisations. Thus, policy tools related with regulating an efficient cannabis market were transferred, as the six plants limit for domestic cultivation, the issuing of licences for cannabis producers; the technical and technological know-how for cannabis growing and its control (i.e. tracking system from seed to sale, packaging and safety standards); and the Social Cannabis Clubs.

Another example of emulation concerned the transference of US referendums political campaigning know how. Based on social research a public campaign was launched based on the general idea that people make judgments about cannabis without much information, and yet the potential for its regulation ignited a dynamic debate with cracks in public opinion to be exploited. Thus, a five strategies campaigning technology was deployed in order to change the image of the political problem: labelling; framing; the communication triangle; the definition of emissaries; and the definition of aesthetics.

The analysis of the different examples of policy transfer found highlights the important role of mutual affinities, empathy and trust in enabling valuable knowledge exchange between political actors. Thus, for example, either a common cannabis growing history and culture, or a results driven shared appeal, were some of the conditions remarked upon by participants who engaged in this type of process. Hence, the availability of ‘suitable matches’ emerged as a relevant analytical dimension to understand how policy transfer can occur.

Conversely, long-standing legal and political culture differences acted as important limits for policy transfer to happen. Thus, more particularly, the role of the state, the role of private actors, and their shared relationship, emerged as a key variable to understand some of the most remarkable policy design differences between recent regulation models implemented. In the Uruguayan case, the legal framework accommodates a highly interventionist state as the central organiser of the selling schema.

Overall, since the Uruguayan government’s irruption in the debate, transnational drug policy reform networks gained importance as a causal contributor, helping to explain why cannabis was regulated in Uruguay, against a backdrop of a majority adverse public opinion. They helped to change the image attached to cannabis reform, to defend the Uruguayan initiative in a rather hostile international conventions arena, and to fill in the gaps of knowledge in order to develop a suitable regulation framework, which actually resulted in an exceptional political output that included domestic cultivation, Social Cannabis Clubs and a selling scheme. In this way, the analysis shows the long-standing importance of including an international factor as a key causal contributor for the expansion of cannabis policies from the countries of the north to those in the south.