I’ve just uploaded the paper I’ll be presenting at the APSA meeting at the end of August: “Bolivia’s Party System after October 2003: Where Did all the Politicians Go?”
It’s a little rough still, since it’s based on some very preliminary & incomplete data collection. It’s part of a larger three-year project I’ll be working on as part of an NSF-funded project w/ (among others) Matt Shugart, Ellis Krauss, and Robert Pekkanen.
Basically, it looks at incumbent reelection in Bolivia, specifically to see whether there is evidence for a “realignment” between “anti-system” forces behind MAS & “establishment” political forces behind PODEMOS. Interestingly, there are relatively few incumbents returned (relative to previous elections). This may seem intuitive, but not when one considers that comparatively few MAS legislators elected in 2002 returned in 2005. It raises some interesting questions I’d like to explore further: Why hasn’t MAS retained more of its personnel? Why didn’t the MAS 2005 electoral lists include other prominent figures from the “Gas War” or veterans of the katarista indigenous movement?
