jats:pEcuador's policy of Buen Vivir seeks to reduce social inequalities and tackle complex disadvantages associated with gender, location, race‐ethnicity, and other axes of social difference. The paper analyses governmental thinking and institutional arrangements to explore Buen Vivir's interpretations of the country's constitutional commitment to equality in diversity, in light of the Sustainable Development Goal of ‘Leaving No One Behind’ (LNOB). Situating Ecuador's array of measures in the context of postcolonial institutionalisation, the paper examines how colonial‐modern legacies of knowledge production and governance channel state Buen Vivir into the reproduction of exclusionary configurations of power and difference.</jats:p>