Abstract
Living a novel political stability under the hegemony of a party (MAS) which constitutes its identity largely by the negation of its own partisan nature and by declaring itself a mere political instrument of social movements, Bolivia faces important challenges to the institutionalization of its politics. On the one hand, it is undeniable that many of the most important social movements and civil society organizations find representation and influence over the state machinery through the party, which is a clear democratic enhancement. On the other hand, classical issues of cooptation and the autonomy of social movements return to the forefront, while the opposition remains unable to organize stable and coherent parties and is often reduced to localized regional trenches. The aim of this work is to map Bolivian actual democracy through the analysis of the current “plurinational” institutional refoundation and the main issues and existing cleavages in contemporary political agenda after a decade of MAS’s rule and how these relate to the governing party, the opposition, and the most important social movements of national scope in the country, as well as considerations over the primacy such movements exert in political mediation, their relations to both ruling and opposing parties, and the prospects for the quality of democracy in the highly heterogeneous and unequal Bolivian society.
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Notes
- 1.
Movement Towards Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of Peoples.
- 2.
A reference to the month with the major confrontations and in which the president abdicated.
- 3.
What was later to become MAS had already run on the 1997 elections under the lists of United Left (IU) due to bureaucratic problems with the register of their party (which then was named Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples).
- 4.
Which are, however, affiliated to the CSUTCB and thus may be perceived as having participated indirectly.
- 5.
CONAMAQ, for instance, declared itself to be outside the Pacto at a certain point of the CA (see Schavelzon 2012).
- 6.
Which is not at all a low number if we take into consideration the proportion with the total number of representatives (7 over 130, slightly over 5% of the total) and between the ethnic minorities and the total population of Bolivia, which according to Diego Ayo (2010, 125) is approximately 4.5%
- 7.
Dismantled with police repression and the decision to install two such plants to placate the demand without canceling the original projected location (Observatório Político Sul-Americano 2016, 09/05/2010).
- 8.
See Observatório Político Sul-Americano (Observatório Político Sul-Americano 2016, 16/08/2010).
- 9.
As they are called in the country’s political jargon.
- 10.
The most notable exception was former president Jorge Quiroga (2001–2002) who joined the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and tried to associate himself with conservative stances such as explicit allusions to the Catholic faith and stark criticism toward the government’s coca eradication policies – although the results of such policies have been actually quite successful (see Farthing and Kohl 2010).
- 11.
Though the alliance was conformed not between MDS and the Broad Front, but rather between the former and Doria Medina’s original centrist party National Unity (UN), which caused the implosion of the Broad Front project – which was conceived as a programmatic forum intended to last beyond the electoral cycle – with the exit of its left wing.
- 12.
MSM was a formal MAS ally between 2005 and 2010 and presented legislative candidates within MAS’ electoral lists in both 2005 and 2009 general elections. The alliance was one of MAS’ strategies to penetrate the urban electorate, but it came to an end over a dispute between both parties over candidates for the departmental and municipal elections of 2010 (see Cunha Filho 2010).
- 13.
Quispe got elected for the 2015–2010 legislature but has ever since been at odds with his party leadership and fellow representatives for various reasons. One of the last conflicts arose after he announced participation in a political meeting at the US Embassy to discuss proposals for change in the country. He is now facing threats of expulsion from his own party and even from parliament in a joint effort between opposition and government supporters – which illustrates some of the opposition’s current difficulties in finding common grounds but also illustrates something of the new epochal common sense.
- 14.
Two hundred twenty-seven municipal governments out of a total of 339 municipalities and 6 departmental governments out of 9 (see Cunha Filho 2015).
- 15.
Journalist Carlos Valverde denounced a possible influence peddling involving a former Morales lover, Gabriela Zapata – with whom he allegedly had had a secret child – and who was now advisor for the Chinese contractor CAMC, a firm with various multimillionaire contracts with the State. Morales denied the peddling but acknowledged having had the child which according to him had died very shortly after birth. Zapata then went on to declare the child was alive and when demanded by Morales to present him publicly, she presented a minor to a judicial commission which later found out that the child was not her son and had been “borrowed” from some unknown family through bribes. The government is now using the fact to prosecute Zapata and her lawyer – who are currently in jail – in a very controversial move that has been condemned by the Bolivian Attorneys’ Association.
- 16.
- 17.
Including the fact that the actual text of the statutes was mostly unknown to most of the population.
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Cunha Filho, C.M. (2018). Dilemmas of Contemporary Political Representation in Bolivia: Social Movements, Party, and State in Plurinational Times. In: Albala, A. (eds) Civil Society and Political Representation in Latin America (2010-2015). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67801-6_7
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