3. Extracting to Educate? The Commodities Boom, State Construction, and State Universities

Why the percentage of the canon allocated to research in state universities is not being used for its proposed objectives? How can millions of soles not be properly used by public universities in desperate need of resources? Based on two case studies (San Agustín University in Arequipa and San Antonio de Abad University in Cuzco), we argue that these poor results are due to institutional characteristics and legacies involved in the approval and implementation of canon legislation. We propose that increasing state income, and the fact that this expansion of the public budgets did not mean a significant cost for other groups through tax expansion, helped to activate the formation and approval of research canon in Congress. Nonetheless, three factors are key for understanding weak implementation straying far from the law’s objective to promote research: weak political parties in Congress, weak and clientelist state universities, and a strong MEF more worried about irresponsible expenditure than about institutional weakness or more efficient expenditure.