Just a shameless plug a few things of mine that just came out in print. Two are specifically on Bolivia; the other is a published version of the writing/discussion assignment I developed based on American Idol & presented at the 2009 APSA Teaching & Learning Conference.
The journal Latin American Perspectives recently put out an excellent double-volume issue on “Bolivia Under Morales.” K8 had an article in the first (May) issue; mine came out in the second (July) issue. My article (“Savina Cuéllar and Bolivia’s New Regionalism”) uses the 2009 election of Savina Cuéllar as the first female & indigenous prefect of Chuquisaca to explore the new regionalist political dynamics at work in contemporary Bolivia.
I continued the regionalist theme in an essay I was invited to write for Americas Quarterly. In the essay (“Bolivia’s Radical Decentralization”) I argue that Evo’s lasting legacy to Bolivia will likely be institutional, not socioeconomic or ideological. The decentralization process that began in 1994 (during Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s first term) has accelerated under Evo’s government, transforming Bolivia from a unitary state to something closer to a federal model.
(In light of both articles, it’s interesting to note that just this week the department of Potosí has mobilized under a regionalist banner—even demanding federalism—despite having been a strong pro-MAS electorate since 2005.)
Finally, my teaching article (“Pop Culture in the Classroom: American Idol, Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville”) came out in the July issue of PS: Political Science & Politics. The short article is just built around one of my favorite assignments used in intro to comparative politics courses. Basically, students are asked to write what they think Marx or Tocqueville would think about American Idol (substantiating their argument w/ direct citations from The Communist Manifesto & the introduction to Democracy in America).
(I’m also posting this as a way to both procrastinate on my upcoming APSA paper & to feel productive despite said procrastination.)
Potosi is a MAS stronghold at departmental level, but the capital is an opposition stronghold which has elected Rene Joaquino as mayor, and his party holds seats in Congress.
What many people don't know is that Evo had been politically active for many years before his rise to national prominence. One effect of LPP was that it allowed people like Evo and Manfred to build their own political bases and in doing so, political vehicles that undermined the existing party system.
Your article on decentralisation, as said before, was excellent. What could have been expanded upon in that, however, is the question of whether it poses any threat to attempts by a ruling party (in this case MAS) to establish hegemony over institutions of state, with a view to how the fragmentation and shifting alliances since the regional elections will have any effect on national politics in the next few years.
Creating a true federal state would amount to a "refounding" or redefining of a country's nature as a federation of states with inherent jurisdiction.
I'd hope my regular readers are aware of the above points, since I've made them numerous times myself here. (It's worth noting that one of the first acts of the Potosí movement was to defend Joaquino against the central government, which is hoping to launch criminal proceedings against him -- as it has w/ most other opposition leaders.)
I thought I conveyed your point about the difficulties of any party establishing hegemony in a post-decentralized Bolivia in the AQ piece. Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough. But your point is well taken. I agree that it is unlikely that MAS can establish the kind of single- or dominant-party state many expect/fear/desire.
However, I'm not sure whether it's necessary to create a "true" federal state. One of the things I've argued is that Bolivia is moving towards a de facto federalism (like Spain), regardless of what it's called.
A de facto federalism would involve devolving broad powers to regional governments. Spain as I noted is a case where autonomies have merely restored what had existed in the First Republic (where the Basque Country and Catalonia received autonomy), or what had existed in Spain until 1707 where the various states were more or less semi-independent with their own parliaments, councils, and legal traditions. So you can say that Spain is historically a federation of nations, just as the UK is by the Acts of Union (which abolished the Scottish and Irish parliaments- arguably a mistake which changed the course of history).
It comes down to practice. If the departments accumulate broad powers and can act independently in those matters, then a de facto federalism materialises. But redefining a country as a "federation" is another thing because it implies a different relationship- that a state or province is an entity with some form of sovereignty, that the federal government only holds the powers the states have agreed to hand over. It implies that certain rights are inherent to entities like states or, for that matter, indigenous communities.
I should have said Second Republic, not first!
I'm not sure how much it matters whether in the distant past the units were once independent (as in Spain or Britain). But if so, a case could be made that the departments of Bolivia had pre-republic autonomy during the wars for independence(when the various "republiquetas" fought autonomously against the Spanish crown). Fundamentally, I don't think it matters whether a country calls itself explicitly federal (or adopts such a constitutional framework). What matters is how the units behave. And I argue that Bolivia is quickly behaving more & more like a federacy (perhaps the better term).
It is key to understanding events in Spain since 1707- the War of Spanish Succession, the Carlist Wars and, of course, the Spanish Civil War. The regionalist factor was key in each of them.
In some places, a high degree of autonomy is accrued by convention due, for instance, to geographic factors such as remoteness.
In the Soviet Union, nominal federalism was blended in with totalitarian control. But it also fostered the development of local elites who abandoned Communism (not that many of them ever believed in it), which allowed places like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc to maintain police state regimes after independence.
It seems that I need read The journal Latin American Perspective and Americas Quarterly now.Thanks for yur review
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