Atlas / Organisations / Buen Vivir
Buen Vivir
Sumak kawsay · 2000– · Ecuador, Bolivia · Ecological / Indigenous · Doctrine / school · coding confidence low
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Wellbeing defined communally and ecologically rather than by growth; nature granted enforceable rights in the constitution.
Economic model
Communal land and water, plurinational resource governance, limits on extraction — in tension with the resource revenue the same governments rely on.
Organisation of powers
Plurinational state recognising indigenous legal systems alongside the national one.
Reading note
Written into the Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions and then largely overridden by extractive policy. Coded on the doctrine, not the practice.
Check a claim about Buen Vivir. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −07
Coded −7: communal land and water against extraction.
- Documented act or statuteThe 2008 Ecuadorian constitution grants nature enforceable rights in Articles 71 to 74.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored −04
Coded −4: indigenous cosmology against a development model.
- Programme textSumak kawsay is written into the constitution as the organising social goal.
AU · Organisation of power · scored −04
Coded −4: plurinational recognition of parallel legal systems.
- Documented act or statuteThe Bolivian constitution recognises indigenous justice systems alongside the ordinary courts.
SC · Scale of decision · scored −07
Coded −7: community and territory as the decision units.
- Documented act or statutePrior consultation on extraction is constitutionally required in both states.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +04
Coded +4: membership through indigenous nationhood within a plurinational state.
- Documented act or statuteBolivia's constitution names 36 indigenous nations as constituent.
CH · Method and tempo · scored −01
Coded −1: constitutional in method, and largely overridden in practice.
- ScholarshipBoth governments expanded extraction in territories the same constitutions protect.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
Countries
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Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.