Sovereign Bonds and Market Discipline: Managing Accumulation and Uncertainty in Ecuador

ABSTRACT Over 50 years, sovereign debt in low‐ and middle‐income countries has become market‐based as financial firms displaced official lenders. Research explains how bond‐market discipline operates but leaves unanswered why sovereign bonds themselves require discipline to circulate as capital. Drawing on historical materialism, I develop an account grounded in bonds as fictitious capital, tradable claims whose present valuation capitalizes future state revenues and, through them, claims on future surplus value. I examine this through critical discourse analysis of three investor sessions focused on Ecuador's dollarized economy, read against sovereign spreads, IMF program documents, and reform records. Market actors manage accumulation by advocating reforms that redirect value toward repayment and manage uncertainty through practices that render political‐economic futures calculable. Market pricing responded most strongly to threats against fiscal consolidation and dollar liquidity, revealing discipline as a distributed process linking creditor expectations, state policy, and the hierarchy of money.