March 2009 Archives

MABB & I are presenting a paper at this weekend’s MPSA conference in Chicago. Our paper is titled “The Political Economy of Bolivia’s New Regionalism: A Look at Electoral Patterns in Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Chuquisaca” and uses municipal-level election, socioeconomic, and demographic (ethnicity) data to test the conventional wisdom explanation for regional autonomy movements in the Media Luna.

We found that differences in degrees of “ruralness,” poverty, and “indigeneity” across municipalities had no significant relationship (except in Chuquisaca) with support for Evo Morales, MAS, pro-autonomy prefect candidates, or regional autonomy. You can read our paper here; we appreciate any comments or feedback.

Every once in a while I get feedback of various sorts on my blog. Often, these fall into two camps: 1) why don’t I post more about Bolivia news? or 2) why do I let my biases keep me from reporting certain things? Oddly, I the second criticism comes from those who think I’m too anti-MAS and those who think I’m not critical enough of the MAS government.

I’m still swamped at work (and sick w/ the flu), but this almost slipped by me until K8 pointed it out: The Saginaw News is virtually shutting down. Actually, a number of Michigan papers are in serious trouble.

Barrioflores already tweeted it, but El Deber published an Ipsos/AOM poll of likely presidential candidates for Bolivia’s December 2009 general election.

And so, Battlestar Galactica winds down to a sad, but exciting end. Tonight’s episode will surely end in another signature cliffhanger, leading up to next week’s series finale. But the ride has been an amazing ride through four seasons.

Over the weekend, a crowd of MAS supporters attacked the home of Bolivia’s former vice president & indigenous leader, Víctor Hugo Cárdenas. Cárdenas, then leader of MRTK, was vice president under Goni (1993-1997). At the time, MRTKL was the largest of the katarista parties—though it never won more than 2-3% of the national vote in any given election. Still, Cárdenas is often credited w/ putting Goni’s campaign “over the top,” as well as for initiating a new “multicultural” period of Bolivian politics.

By now everyone that needed to be notified has been, and so it’s appropriate to broadcast: I’m moving to Oxford, Mississippi.