Post on 04-Mar-2023
1
Governing for the Long Haul: Coalition-Building and Power-Sharing in “Revolutionary” Bolivia
Santiago Anria
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Jennifer Cyr University of Arizona
Abstract: What explains a reformist party’s ability to retain its original transformative project when confronted with the challenges of governing? Why are some of these parties more successful than others at managing the potentially conflicting interests of their diverse social bases? Despite the importance of parties for democracy, we know surprisingly little about their internal lives. We argue that foundational choices—the strategies undertaken by party leaders in founding and building a coalition of support—shape a party’s ability to retain a reformist character when confronted with the challenges of governing. Specifically, the nature of the party’s organizational core, together with its strategies to craft social coalitions to win and share state power, establish a coalitional logic that is difficult to reverse once it has been put into place. This logic shapes a party’s ability to impose costs on coalitional partners without threatening the viability of the coalition itself. We elaborate this argument by comparing the coalition building and maintenance of two reformist parties in Bolivia: the historic Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). Our findings have implications for how scholars theorize about the importance of organizational resources for explaining long-term trajectories of party building.
Currently under review: Please do not cite with authors’ permission.
2
Introduction Reformist political parties with diverse coalitions of societal support face major challenges when
they capture state power. Perhaps the most difficult of these is defending and promoting their
transformative agenda once in office. In some cases, internal divisions and diverging interests
force these parties to dilute their agenda and adapt to the status quo. Others, however, manage to
maintain more radical agendas despite internal tensions. What explains a party’s ability to retain
its original reformist character when confronted with the challenges of governing? Why are some
more successful than others at managing the potentially conflicting interests of their diverse
social bases? What coalitional characteristics are necessary to advance the transformative agenda
these parties promote?
In the following pages, we demonstrate that foundational choices—the strategies
undertaken by party leaders in founding and building a coalition of support—shape a party’s
ability to retain a reformist character when confronted with the challenges of governing. In
making this argument, we build on research that recognizes that parties are often comprised of
coalitions of stakeholders with divergent political preferences and policy positions, making
coalition building and maintenance difficult.1 We add to this literature by demonstrating that the
nature of a coalition’s origins establishes a coalitional logic that is difficult to reverse once it has
been put into place. Initial decisions regarding how to form alliances and with whom to ally
condition how coalitional dynamics unfold. Specifically, we argue, they shape a party’s ability to
impose costs on coalitional partners without threatening the viability of the coalition itself.
These findings are important for theoretical and substantive reasons. Theoretically,
despite consensus on the importance, if not the indispensability, of parties for aggregating
political interests in representative democracies, it is surprising how little we know about their
3
internal life. We know little about how parties operate once in office, and how they choose to
develop and sustain governing coalitions. This is true even in the literature on coalition theory.2
Yet, the existence of parties with multiple (and diverging) sources of societal support is not
uncommon. Populist parties are inherently multi-class in nature.3 So, too, are nationalist parties,4
movement-based parties,5 and parties that are founded to sustain the support of a single
individual, as with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez6 and the Italian
Forza Italia Political Movement under Silvio Berlusconi.7 These kinds of parties are especially
common in developing democracies, where ‘traditional,’ catch-all parties are increasingly
rejected as viable electoral options.8 The arguments advanced here provide insight into the
factors that contribute to the coalition maintenance of parties with reformist agendas and
heterogeneous social bases.
Additionally, this study adds to our knowledge of party-building in newer democracies.
Recent work has postulated that successful new parties tap into the organizational apparatus of
existing groups, such as unions or social movements.9 This availability of pre-existing
organizational networks has been used to explain variation in the emergence of new political
parties.10 Our work adds nuance to these findings by highlighting the different strategies utilized
by party leaders to build connections to organized civil society, and the long-term impact of such
strategies. Some parties may tap into existing networks via the more superficial strategy of
penetration.11 Others, however, may emerge directly out of a strongly organized social
movement and adopt a more diverse strategy of penetration with diffusion to expand its
organizational base. In the latter case, a party’s organizational apparatus will be built on more
flexible foundations. Our research underscores the importance of an organizational apparatus
4
while also stressing that how an organizational apparatus is built can have longer-term
consequences on enduring party development.
Substantively, this study speaks to the unique challenges of “revolutionary” parties, or
those reformist parties that are explicitly committed to replacing the status quo political order.
Revolutionary parties typically confront a governance dilemma upon arriving in office. They
must reconcile their radical goals with the need to secure solid bases of support. This task often
involves alliance-building with constituencies that have conflicting interests and less radical
ideological positions.12 We demonstrate that how revolutionary parties choose to build these
alliances, and with whom they ally to attain an election-winning coalition, may later constrain the
policies they can pursue in power. The transformative potential of revolutionary parties is
heavily conditioned by the coalition-building dynamics that brought them to power in the first
place.
We demonstrate the cogency of our arguments by comparing the coalition-building and -
maintenance strategies of two mass-based revolutionary parties in Bolivia: the historic
Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR, 1952-1964) and the Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS). Like other revolutionary parties, both the historic MNR and the MAS came to power
with a promise to radically overhaul the existing political order. This promise made alliance-
building and maintenance difficult, as the MNR’s experience in power shows. Shortly after
capturing state power with the 1952 revolution, the MNR began to back away from its
revolutionary project, failing to balance the tradeoffs between pursuing that agenda and
satisfying its diverse social bases. The MAS (2006-present), by contrast, has continued to defend
its banner of radical change, and has retained and even increased its popular support despite a
strikingly heterogeneous social base and internal divisions.
5
Our analysis of the diverging experiences of MNR and MAS shows that the origins of the
broad-based coalitions that bring reformist parties to power shape in great part the durability of
those coalitions over time. In the following pages, we adopt a comparative-historical approach
with insights from the literature on historical institutionalism.13 Comparative-historical work
privileges the temporal dimensions of political explanation and pays close attention to the
duration and timing of events.14 In adopting this approach, we explain coalitional success in
terms of the initial strategies undertaken by leaders and the historical and structural context in
which those strategies are adopted. A contextualized comparison15 of the historic MNR with the
MAS is particularly well suited for uncovering the nature and sequencing of coalition-building
and maintenance.
Building and Sustaining Power: The “Coalitional Logic”
In his study of party strategy, Gibson16 argues that parties typically have two distinctive
constituencies: a “core” and a “non-core” constituency.17 The core constituency provides
financial resources and policymaking support. Still, it is generally incapable on its own of
making the party a viable electoral force, let alone an electoral winner. To compensate for this
deficiency, parties usually make inroads into non-core constituencies, expanding their electoral
base.18 Conservative parties, for example, generally employ segmented strategies to craft
winning coalitions.19 They extract resources from their “vote-poor but resource-rich” core
constituency and use them to pursue the vote of “vote-rich but resource-poor” non-core
constituencies.20 The strategy for mobilizing the latter group is less programmatically oriented
than the one directed at core groups. Consequently, the non-core constituency almost always
consists of a less ideologically committed coalition. This literature typically focuses on the
electoral strategies for building a winning coalition. It says little, however, about (a) how parties
6
that are initially resource-poor and vote-poor strategize their appeals, and (b) how parties sustain
governing coalitions once power is achieved.
In a different work, Gibson21 offers some insight into sustaining governing coalitions by
examining the evolution of populist parties in Latin America. He argues that different
constituencies perform distinct functions for governing parties. A “central” constituency is
important for policy-making purposes, while a “peripheral” constituency expands the territorial
reach of the party and generates electoral majorities that reproduce power over time.22 This study
highlights the territorial component of coalition building and uncovers the bargaining that occurs
between the center and periphery to ensure the sustainability of populist coalitions. It tells us
less, however, about the origins of the populist coalition and the attributes of the core
constituency, which might facilitate the sustainability of the coalition. As a result, populist
leaders have considerable room to position different constituencies against each other on policy
issues while facing few internal constraints. We find that the attributes of the organizational core
are central to the durability of broad-based coalitions, for they can restrain the strategic
flexibility of leaders in office.
Indeed, our argument begins with the Weberian-inspired premise that decisions made
early on matter in the long run.23 Early strategies regarding the choice of target audiences for a
party’s alliance-building efforts have an enduring impact on the capacity to maintain that alliance
over time. Specifically, these strategies help to establish a coalitional logic that shapes future
coalitional choices and dynamics. Three structural and agential dimensions of the coalition’s
origins define this coalitional logic: the type of core, linkage strategies, and initial expansion
strategies. Type of core refers to the ideological and organizational attributes of a party’s central
group of support. All mass-based reformist parties depend upon a primary sector of support, be it
7
from the conservative, working, or middle classes. This core can sustain or limit a party’s
transformative project. It can also shape with whom and how a party’s shares power.
Linkage strategy refers to how party leaders establish alliances with coalitional partners
to craft a winning coalition. Parties may pursue clientelist ties, relying on patronage and other
material rewards for garnering coalitional support. Alternatively, they may pursue a more formal
incorporation of groups, by incentivizing party membership and/or tying the political fates of
each group to that of the party. These ties are more encapsulating in nature. A party may also
adopt a mix of both strategies. Finally, expansion strategy refers to how parties integrate non-
core allies into the coalition early on, in the hopes of producing and reproducing power. Parties
may seek to expand their territorial support via strategies of penetration or diffusion.24 The
former tends to foster more particularistic (extensive) ties. The latter is associated with more
organic (intensive) ties with coalitional partners.
The characteristics of the party’s core, as well as the initial strategies used to connect
with coalitional partners and expand a party’s broad-based social coalition, help to forge a
coalitional logic that is resistant to change. The coalitional logic shapes how parties manage the
tradeoffs of governing while maintaining ties with allied actors in the hopes of sustaining their
projects over time. Different coalitional logics generate incentives that are either propitious or
inimical to defending ambitious projects of social and political transformation. For example, a
linkage strategy of clientelism with an expansion strategy of penetration will allow a party to
quickly amass widespread support from different societal groups and attain power. However,
enduring support will likely be dependent upon a party’s capacity to continually provide
patronage while also meeting the multiple demands of different sectors. This kind of contingent
coalitional logic is not conducive to sustainability over time. Yet, the particularities of the party’s
8
core constituency may impede the adoption of more encapsulating linkage and expansion
strategies. A party’s core, taken together with its linkage and initial expansion strategies, largely
influence the development of a party’s coalition over time.
Certainly, reformist parties confront numerous structural constraints, including economic
pressures and potentially disruptive social crises, which can also obstruct coalition maintenance.
We do not discount these factors. Instead we hold that the coalitional elements discussed above
better explain whether these parties can address such problems in ways that allow them to sustain
their governing coalitions. Our comparative analysis of the historic MNR with today’s MAS
supports the explanatory power of these coalitional factors, even in the face of analytically
similar structural challenges. For example, the historic MNR is typically analyzed as a party
whose revolutionary ambitions were dampened by foreign pressures over impending economic
crisis.25 These external pressures certainly contributed to the party’s “uncompleted” revolution.
They do not, however, fully explain why the MNR fell short in its revolutionary goals and
eventually collapsed. An additional, crucial explanatory element derives from the MNR’s
coalition-building dynamics and the organizational attributes underpinning its governments. As
we show below, the party’s coalitional partners refused to incur the costs that the MNR needed
to impose to withstand foreign pressures in the face of looming economic crisis.
The MAS still remains in power at the time of writing.26 Though we cannot know what
awaits the MAS’s revolutionary project in the future, we can nonetheless assess its progress thus
far as indicative of the party’s greater capacity to maintain a broad-based coalition and,
consequently, the transformative project that it pursues, especially vis-à-vis the historic MNR.
This is true despite a pronounced social crisis that, like the economic crisis confronted by the
historic MNR, pitted coalitional partners against each other.
9
A comparison of the historic MNR with the MAS, two revolutionary parties in Bolivia,
allows us to control for the structural and idiosyncratic differences that cross-country
comparisons inevitably confront. We therefore feel more confident that we are isolating the
strategic factors that enable or prohibit coalition maintenance over time. Indeed, the MAS in
government is regularly analyzed with the historic MNR in mind.27 Despite this implicit
comparison, little has been written about the extent to which the complexity of each party’s
internal coalition politics shaped its transformative project.28 Comparing the experiences of the
MNR and the MAS offers a unique opportunity to assess the effects that different coalitional
logics have on whether reformist parties retain their initial agenda once they are confronted with
the challenges of governing.
Bolivia’s Two Revolutions: The Transformative Agendas of Historic MNR and the MAS In 1952, Bolivia experienced a three-day revolution that brought to power the MNR. Just
over fifty years later, in 2005, the MAS came to power with a transformative agenda that, for
many, represented a continuation of MNR’s “uncompleted” revolution.29 Both parties promised
to radically transform the country, upending the political and economic status quo, although the
nature of their revolutionary project differed. In this section, we outline and compare each
revolutionary party’s agenda and define success versus failure with respect to maintaining that
transformative agenda once in power.
By the 1930s, Bolivia was teetering on economic insolvency. The price of the country’s
main export, tin, was dropping precipitously. This, along with the country’s disastrous defeat to
Paraguay in the Chaco War, sent Bolivia into a political and economic tailspin.30 Labor groups
that emerged during the peak years of tin extraction and exportation, along with the indigenous
10
peoples who had fought in the Chaco War, became increasingly mobilized. The country was ripe
for change, and the MNR quickly positioned itself as the leader of that change.
The MNR was founded in 1941 by a group of college-educated intellectuals motivated to
enter politics by the perilous state of the impoverished middle class and by the perceived threat
of imperialism to national development. Early party-building focused on cultivating the support
of the middle class in urban areas. At the time MNR was little more than a small group of
intellectuals, “stirring up all the fuss they could.”31 Still, it entered into government almost
immediately. Joining forces with a reform-minded military faction led by General Gualberto
Villaroel, the MNR gained power in 1943 in a bloodless coup.32 Its initial stint in government,
however, was short-lived. The party was forced out of power when Villaroel was violently
overthrown in 1946.
The MNR’s early, failed experience in government convinced leaders that formal
political power mattered little as long as the country’s economic wealth remained concentrated in
the hands of a small, tin-based oligarchy, known as La Rosca. Party founders, Victor Paz
Estenssoro among them, began to call for radical change. Revolution was seen as the only viable
path for reversing the deeply entrenched interests of a stark few.33 As MNR leaders radicalized,
they understood that party support would have to expand. Therefore, they broadened their
rhetoric, adopting a nationalist, popular message to appeal to the disenfranchised lower classes.34
When it finally came to power, it promoted a radical transformative agenda based primarily on
redressing serious economic and political inequalities that divided Bolivian society.
The MNR’s revolutionary project was developmental and nationalist in nature. Its
primary goal was economic reorganization: an overhaul of the oligarch-dominated system such
that all Bolivians could benefit from the economy, as consumers, and help to cultivate the
11
economy, as producers. Toward this end, workers and peasants were sources of “political motor
power and…‘human capital’ to be nurture, trained, and allocated.”35 They were groups that
became, in practice, vital to the party’s revolutionary project, as we will see below.
The MNR was active in pursuing these revolutionary goals in its first years in office. It
nationalized the mining industry; implemented an agrarian reform law; introduced universal
suffrage; and created a Ministry of Indian and Peasant Affairs, through which peasant syndicates
were created and education reform was pursued. In each of these initiatives, the promotion of
previously excluded groups—including the workers and the peasants—was privileged, as they
were viewed by the MNR as the engine of sustainable, sovereign growth. Still, the MNR’s
project was distinctly nationalist in nature. Rather than advocate for social and political
transformations that valued racial and ethnic difference, the MNR sought to create a
“homogenous national culture” in which all identified as Bolivian.36
The MNR’s nationalist, homogenizing project distinguishes its transformative agenda
from that which the MAS promoted. The incorporation of Bolivia’s indigenous population into
national life—a goal of the 1952 revolution37—would occur via economic integration and the
construction of a nación (one, single cultural group) against the anti-nación, which was
embodied by la Rosca. The MAS is inspired by nationalism, but ideological features of
indigenism and Marxism also imbue it.38 This means that the MAS’s transformative project is
more eclectic. Along with economic goals, it has sought to incorporate the country’s indigenous
population by espousing indigenous autonomy through the creation of new institutions of self-
governance,39 and by institutionalizing ethnic and racial difference through a constitutional
expansion of individual and collective rights.
12
The MAS emerged from a grassroots social movement of coca producers. Founded in
Bolivia’s Chapare region in the mid-1990s, it became the country’s largest party in less than a
decade. Its leader, Evo Morales, won three presidential elections (2005, 2009, and 2014) with
absolute majorities. The MAS emerged from the conviction by coca growers and other peasant
groups that they should have a political organization to contest elections on their own, rather than
in alliance with existing parties. Its rapid ascension to power occurred through the construction
of an unusually strong rural-urban coalition crafted via different linkages between the MAS and
organized popular constituencies.
The MAS’ emergence is closely associated with the distributive consequences of
neoliberal reforms implemented in Bolivia between 1985 and 2005. Central to these policies was
the closure of state-owned and –operated tin mines. Thousands of miners were forced to
“relocate” to other sectors of the economy.40 Some of these left the mines and moved to cities
like El Alto.41 Others moved to the coca-producing regions of the Chapare, where they began to
grow coca and organize as cocaleros.42 Some of the key founders of the MAS believed the
cocaleros had the greatest mobilizational power to carry out a revolutionary project.43 United
against the criminalization of coca triggered by the U.S-sponsored drug war,44 cocaleros decided
to build an electoral vehicle through which they could challenge neoliberal policies.45 This
formula proved to be successful, and less than ten years after its emergence, the MAS captured
the presidency. Once in power, it promoted an agenda of social, political, and economic reforms
and sought to institutionalize ethnic difference through the construction of a “plurinational” state.
At the center of this project is the idea of expanding rights and representation to indigenous
groups. Processes of inclusionary transformation take time to mature, and it may not be prudent
to measure their short-term success. What we can say here, however, is that by promoting the
13
construction of “plurinational” state that seeks to respect the diversity of Bolivia’s indigenous
identities, the MAS created multiple stakeholders and it thus opened its project to the scrutiny of
those groups.
The MNR and the MAS, therefore, advocated for radical transformative changes in
Bolivia. The content of their revolutionary project, however, was different. Whereas the MNR’s
goals were broadly economic in nature, the MAS pursued economic and also socio-cultural
change. In the following pages, we demonstrate that MAS has been more successful than the
historic MNR in retaining this agenda over time. We define success in specific ways. First, we
expect the governing party to respect, to the extent possible, the revolutionary agenda with which
they built a coalition of support and successfully came to power. Respecting this agenda is most
difficult when a crisis occurs that may force a governing coalition to adopt policies that run
counter to that agenda. At least in the short term, everyday governance may require foregoing
certain “revolutionary” positions in response to a crisis. We do not consider the adoption of
specific policies that are contradictory to a revolutionary project as definitive indicators of the
abandonment of that project.
Instead, we are interested in how the governing coalition as a whole weathers the crisis
and the government’s response to it. Are the coalitional partners willing to accept short-term
costs in pursuit of a longer-term revolutionary goal? Are there mechanisms in place to compel
that such costs be incurred? In other words, is the governing party able to retain the support of
most of its coalitional partners even as it enacts measures that, in the immediate-term, run against
its radical platform? If so, then we see this as evidence of the party’s ability to retain its
transformative agenda. If not, then we assert that the transformative agenda will be greatly
weakened. Without the support of either vote-rich or resource-rich coalitional partners, a reform-
14
minded party will be hard-pressed to enact the changes it pursues. A second indicator of a party’s
ability to retain its transformative agenda, therefore, is its ability to retain its coalitional partners
in the face of crisis or challenge.
We will see below that the MNR faced a major economic crisis—one that threatened the
country’s economic and fiscal solvency and, consequently, the very heart of the party’s
revolutionary agenda. In cases such as this one, a reformist government may face serious
national and international pressures to adopt policies that permanently undermine the party’s
revolutionary goals. Even here, the party can act to salvage its coalition of support. It may make
affective or programmatic appeals as a way to shore up support among its partners. Where these
kinds of appeals are not possible, however, party leaders may find themselves with little recourse
for keeping the coalition together. Major crisis may threaten the livelihood of a revolutionary
agenda, but, where a party can compel its partners to stay the course, it need not mean its
imminent demise.
In what remains of the text, we demonstrate that the MAS has been much more
successful than the MNR in retaining its original, transformative agenda. This is true even
though the MAS experienced a series of crises—some of them major—that threatened socio-
cultural elements of its revolutionary project and provoked serious internal strain. The MNR, on
the other hand, faced a serious economic crisis. Given these differences, one might argue that the
diverging fortunes of each party are hardly surprising. However, such a conclusion would
privilege structural factors and underemphasize political dynamics and strategic choices. As we
show below, there was trouble in the MNR’s coalition of support before the crisis set in.
Whereas the MAS has compelled the continued support of many of its coalitional partners into
15
its third administration despite socio-cultural crises, the historic MNR’s support base quickly
unraveled.
These different outcomes are attributable, we argue, to the strategies used by each party
to arrive in power. The sections below treat each revolutionary project in turn, identifying the
party’s core source of support, and examining how each multi-class coalition was eventually
built. The type of core, together with the strategies enacted to build coalitional linkages and
expand those territorially, helped forge a coalitional logic that, once in place, was difficult to
reverse or change.
Building the MNR’s Multi-Class Coalition46
The MNR’s Core. Despite its pursuit of a multi-class coalition, the MNR’s core
constituency sat firmly with the fledgling middle class. As it cultivated ties with labor and the
peasants, the party sought to remain deferential to the middle class, its “political center of
gravity.”47 The party’s past governing experience helped it attract the support of labor and the
peasantry.48 Still, the construction of a cross-class coalition was not easy.
For one, labor was suspicious of the MNR’s proclaimed revolutionary tendencies.49 The
party’s populist message contradicted labor’s Marxist and Trotskyist origins. Its more pragmatic,
reform-minded core was equally reluctant to ally with labor. Party leaders therefore struggled to
integrate labor into its coalition without adopting its more radical positions. Ultimately, labor and
party leaders united around their mutual antagonism toward the post-1946 military regime. It
cracked down on labor leaders and MNR cadres alike after each protest or disturbance against
the government. In so doing, it consolidated their shared hatred of the extant regime.50
16
Still, the party’s leadership was hesitant to fully integrate the working class sectors into
the party hierarchy. Its National Political Committee (CPN in Spanish) was comprised of middle-
and upper-middle class professionals.51 For these risk-adverse (and power-hungry) cadres, there
was no room in the party’s upper echelons for union leaders and their affiliates. Consequently,
integrative party-building, via the formal inclusion of labor and eventually the peasantry into the
party, never occurred.52
MNR’s Linkage and Expansion Strategy. Instead, the MNR undertook a more
expeditious route to coalition-building. It cultivated labor’s support by crafting individual
agreements with union leaders. Each leader brought to the party the organizational apparatus he
oversaw.53 These agreements allowed the MNR to shore up support quickly. They also left union
leaders with a lot of discretion and negotiating power regarding when or if they would lend their
support to the party. Ties with labor, as a result, were highly contingent. By penetrating an extant
union structure, the party became an “instrument” of choice by labor leaders.54 Their
commitment to the party, however, was never secured.
Still, as MNR grew in popularity, aspiring labor leaders, including the leftist firebrand,
Juan Lechín, viewed the party as the best option for attaining national political power. These
men sought closer ties with the party’s national leadership. Specifically, they helped to create a
left-labor faction within the MNR. This faction regularly butted heads with the party’s core
leadership – the more reform-minded, middle-class cadres that dominated the CPN.
Disagreements between the two factions were mediated by a much smaller group of pragmatists
that promoted revolutionary nationalism. This last group was led by Paz Estenssoro, the party’s
most prominent leader.55
17
Ties with labor consolidated before the 1952 revolution. Still, the role that labor would
have in crafting policy and shaping the party’s program remained unclear. Was labor to be an
equal partner with the middle class? On the one hand, the middle class was too small and too
conservative to usher in the kinds of changes that party leadership deemed necessary to promote
its nationalist-developmentalist project. On the other, the middle class was MNR’s core
constituency. As such, it should have driven the party’s policy agenda, especially on high-stakes
issues.56
Adjudicating the relative weight of labor versus the middle class within the party
hierarchy became increasingly pressing after the revolution. Paz Estenssoro assumed the
presidency, and differences between the two groups, which came to be known as the Left and
Right wing of the party, immediately intensified. Just days after the revolution, labor organized a
national-level organization under the leadership of Lechín, called the Central Obrera Boliviana
(COB). From the outset, the COB rejected the multi-class alliance pursued by the MNR. It
believed that such an alliance was impossible given conflicting class interests.57 As the MNR
consolidated its predominant place in the political system, the COB consolidated its
organizational presence throughout the country, circumventing MNR’s (weak) efforts to
integrate it into the party.58
Once in power, Paz Estenssoro pursued closer ties with the peasantry. There were two
reasons for this. First, armed indigenous groups had begun to invade and appropriate unused
territory. The MNR instituted land reform to retroactively legitimate the land-grabs.59 Two, Paz
realized that formal support with peasant federations could offset the influence of labor within
the party’s hierarchy. He therefore used land reform initiatives to solidify their support. As with
labor, MNR chose a less integrative approach to coalition-building. Rather than incentivize party
18
membership among peasant groups, the party sent prominent regional MNR figures to sponsor
the creation of local, independent sindicatos, or peasant unions. Quickly, the party amassed a
network of direct, vertical ties between each leader and the sindicato heads. Peasant support for
the party was therefore a function of the mutually dependent relationship forged between those
individuals.60
The MNR quickly grew from a small, cadre-based party with a middle-class core into a
large, multi-class party with an extensive territorial structure. With the (contingent) support of
labor and peasant leaders, the MNR consolidated its power at the national level, ruling
hegemonically for twelve years.61 Still, the factors that enabled the party’s rapid transformation
made its sustainability more difficult. For one, the party’s middle class core viewed its
coalitional partners with suspicion and unease. Party moderates understood that lower class
support was necessary for the MNR to achieve power. They did not, however, want to share
power with them. These tensions between the party’s core and its broader coalition were never
fully resolved. Moreover, the party privileged extensive over intensive ties with labor and the
peasantry.62 This allowed for rapid coalition construction, but it meant that each sector’s
commitment to the party was weak.
Coalition Maintenance in the Face of Crisis
Although MNR dominated national politics for three terms, its near hegemonic control
obscured serious internal problems. With each presidency, the party’s coalitional ties weakened.
While relying heavily on labor during Paz Estenssoro’s first term, it shifted quickly to the
peasantry in the second. By the party’s third term in office, support from its middle-class core
was seriously in question, and ties to the peasantry increasingly costly. In 1964, the party was
19
overthrown in a bloodless coup. The MNR’s coalition unraveled almost as quickly as it had been
erected.
The construction of the MNR’s coalition happened quickly and extensively.
Consequently, the ties that bound local labor branches and peasant sindicatos to the party were
superficial and highly contingent upon the provision of patronage. From its onset in power, the
party induced participation, discipline, and conformity by offering its partners rewards, including
money, resources, jobs, and governing authority in ministries and regional power bases.63 A
“vast system of patronage” sustained the party’s vertical ties with local union and sindicato
leaders.64
To lessen the potentially conflicting interests of the party’s different factions, the MNR
adopted a pragmatic approach to policy implementation. Different coalitional partners were
assigned policy influence in areas that most affected them. Labor leaders acquired influence over
infrastructural and economic development. Peasant leaders were granted positions of power in
the ministry of peasant affairs and agrarian reform offices.65 Outside of their allotted policy
purview, each sector had very little say. This “parceling out” approach66 enabled the MNR to
manage its coalition by delimiting the influence of each independently powerful sector. The
MNR therefore attempted to segment its coalitional partners into a corporatist structure.67
Because it never fully subordinated its coalitional partners, however, the segmented support
remained dependent upon the provision of patronage and the adoption of measures that reflected
their interests.
The vulnerabilities of this approach to coalition maintenance became apparent when a
serious economic crisis induced the second MNR government,68 to implement a set of austere
economic policies. During MNR’s first term in office, labor unions had attained extensive
20
influence. The three largest labor federations wielded power in three ministries. Miners
dominated the Ministry of Mines; factory workers ran the Ministry of Labor; and railroad
workers managed the Ministry of Public Works. This practice of cogobierno (co-government)
reflected labor’s position of power within the MNR hierarchy.69
By the time Hernán Siles Suazo came to power in 1956, labor’s predominance within the
coalition had become excessively problematic. For one, their influence alienated the middle
classes.70 It also fragmented party leadership, weakening Siles’ grip on the party. Finally, the
economic crisis precluded patronage—the party’s bread and butter of coalition maintenance. The
crisis induced calls from the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the
MNR to reverse its labor-friendly policies.71 By adopting these policies, Siles sought to weaken
labor’s increasingly problematic grip while working to recover ties with the party’s middle class
core.72
The implementation of a stabilization plan debilitated the relationship between the
government and the party’s left wing.73 Further efforts by Siles solidified the party’s turn from
labor. Siles replaced Lechín and other Left-wing leaders in the party’s executive committee with
union and peasant leaders who were loyal to him.74 The president also made direct overtures and
short-term promises to individual union leaders and the COB rank and file. In so doing, he
exacerbated tensions among the COB leadership. He tapped into the party’s peasant sindicato
networks to mobilize their support for the stabilization plan, using them to counter-balance
labor’s influence.75 This strategy made pragmatic sense: the peasantry was largely unaffected by
monetary policy since they existed outside of the money economy.76 Finally, he increased
investments in the armed forces, relying upon the military to rally support among the peasantry
while quelling union protests.
21
Rather than attempt to retain their support, Siles sought to undercut the power of the
party’s COB-dominated Left-wing. These coalitional strategies succeeded in eliminating labor as
a factional competitor within the MNR. The COB struggled to remain relevant in the aftermath
of Siles’ “divide and dominate” strategy.77 Unfortunately for Siles, the strategies also weakened
MNR’s ties with the peasantry. By relying on the military to mobilize peasants, the party
unwittingly helped the military strengthen its own ties to the sector at the expense of its
relationship with the party. Therefore, under Siles, party ties with each group were severely
weakened. Without more broad-based support, the MNR leadership became mired in intense,
elite-based conflicts.78 The CPN converted into a “council of factions” that rarely met after
1960.79
Ultimately, the coalition, based as it was on self-interest and rewards provisions, was
very fragile. It did not have the doctrine or the organizational structure to retain a coalition in
which costs were distributed unequally. A “borrowed” party structure built on shallow ties was
not amenable to exacting sacrifice: neither labor nor the peasantry felt any obligation to the party
once it broke its patronage-based arrangement.80 The MNR abandoned its revolutionary project
with the adoption of the stabilization plan under Siles. It also failed to retain either of its primary
coalitional partners. Labor and also the peasantry—a sector only minimally affected by the
stabilization plan—abandoned the MNR government. Having retained an independent
infrastructure throughout the country, both sectors could continue to operate even after breaking
from the MNR. They could also look for new coalition partners, as the peasantry did with the
military.81 The MNR failed to retain its revolutionary agenda and the coalitional partners that
enabled it.
22
MAS: Origins and Rise to Power
The MAS stands out for its genesis in a highly organized and disciplined social
movement of coca producers. United against the criminalization of coca triggered by the U.S.-
sponsored drug war, cocaleros hatched the idea of building a “political instrument” through
which they could participate in elections without forming alliances with the existing parties.82
The resulting instrument engaged in electoral politics at the local level, making rapid gains,
specifically in the coca-growing Chapare.83 Early electoral successes in the Chapare helped to
consolidate cocaleros as the leading group within the party’s “core constituency.” Having
established a base in the Chapare, the challenge for the MAS was to broaden its appeal by
making inroads into noncore constituencies.
The mass mobilizations that started in 2000 with the Water War contributed to this
process of organizational growth. The MAS used the upheaval to its advantage and adopted a
“supraclass strategy” of electoral recruitment.84 The party turned to non-core constituencies to
acquire an electoral majority.85,86 Expanding the electoral base, however, was anything but
linear. Initially, the MAS sought to include left-leaning and nationalist intellectuals, as well as
urban indigenous and non-indigenous middle classes, for example, by naming first José Antonio
Quiroga and then Antonio Peredo as vice presidential candidates in 2002.87 Expansion via
electoral mobilization and territorial “penetration” were not, however, the only component of its
repertoire. The MAS also followed strategies that aligned better with the idea of territorial
“diffusion,” by opening up party lists to local leaders who ran for electoral office under the MAS
ticket.88 This strategy promoted the support of local organizations and united them into a
common entity. Although the MAS did not win the presidency in 2002, it accrued significant
institutional positions that served as a power base for future elections. It also secured the support
23
of individuals and grassroots organizations that arrived to Congress through their ties to the
MAS.
Mass mobilizations continued between 2003 and 2005, leading to the overthrow of two
presidents. The MAS did not initiate or participate actively in these protests, but they used the
continued upheaval to further expand support. By incorporating the demands of the mobilized
groups, Morales and the MAS shifted the prevailing balance of social forces to their advantage,89
winning the 2005 presidential election. By then, however, the MAS had undergone major
ideological and organizational adjustments. It incorporated the demands of mobilized groups into
its discourse. It also crafted pre-electoral alliances with a wide array of urban popular
organizations. Some of these exchanged loyalty for more particularistic benefits. Other named
their leaders as MAS candidates, cementing ties between them and the MAS.90 The linkages
between the MAS and these organizations were never explicitly recognized in party statutes,
however. Overall, these ties remained loosely structured, leading to tensions between the party
and social movements after the MAS formed national government.
Building the MAS’s dual coalition
The MAS went through a series of shifts between its founding and its rise to national-
level power.91 Most important, it experienced a shift in its internal composition, from a small
group of rural organizations to large and diverse group of base and “umbrella” organizations. As
a result, the MAS crafted two distinct social coalitions. Its central coalition is highly targeted. It
is based in Bolivia’s rural sector and consists of the cocaleros in the Chapare, as well as three
national-level peasant organizations.92 A peripheral coalition, in turn, relies on a broader set of
indigenous movements and urban popular organizations in Bolivia’s cities, where neighborhood
24
associations, trade unions, and other forms of local collective organization play an articulatory
role.
Defining the MAS’ core. The MAS was formed by cocaleros in the Chapare. Its
objectives, therefore, have been infused with the democratic principles and collective decision-
making traditions of agrarian unions, the sindicatos campesinos. These provide a framework for
decision-making embedded in a “culture of delegation and accountability”93 that has deep
historical roots. As Grisaffi94 notes, the MAS’ origins are imbued with these community-based
forms of governance. Therefore, “when Morales won the 2005 election, the coca growers
imagined that the national government would function in a similar way to local government;
…[they] thought of the government officials as nothing more than spokespeople for decisions
forged at their [the cocaleros’] union meetings.” But governing a country involves responding to
wider set of pressures, particularly as the party grows and becomes more heterogeneous.
Of all the grassroots actors that brought Morales to power, he has maintained strongest
links to the cocaleros in the Chapare. He remains the president of the Six Federations of the
Tropics of Cochabamba, the overarching union of coca growers. He travels frequently to
participate in meetings, reaffirm his leadership, and collect valuable information from the rank
and file. Sometimes decisions emanating from the party’s central leadership create tensions
among members of these allied organizations, in particular when the latter feel that their interests
are not sufficiently represented by higher-level authorities. Still, Morales commands
overwhelming authority among the rank and file in the Chapare. He and the party enjoy
strikingly high levels of support in that region of the country.95 Dirigentes—local grassroots
leaders who organize communication between party operatives and grassroots activists—play a
key role in shielding Morales from criticism. When unpopular policies come from the party’s
25
central leadership, dirigentes blame ministers and representatives, deflecting responsibility from
Morales. Examples of these policies include the Gasolinazo of 2010,96 and, paradoxically,
Morales’ coca policy.97,98
In each case, the dirigentes could not generate full compliance with the policies and
encountered popular resistance. Still, the MAS maintains strong connections to its core
constituency, thanks to the permanent interactions and degrees of cooperation that underpin their
relationship.99 This is true despite strong pressures from the core to keep the party leadership
accountable to the rank and file, a pattern that is closely associated with the party’s movement
origins.
MAS’s Linkage and Expansion Strategies. The peripheral constituency of the MAS
was constructed via two strategies: first, by following a pattern of “territorial diffusion,” and
second, by forging personalistic ties with leaders of grassroots organizations.100 The first strategy
allowed the MAS to “benefit from specific local dynamics”,101 at least in the realm of candidate
selection. Such a strategy, in turn, led to the massive incorporation of formerly underrepresented
groups into Congress via their links to the MAS.102 It also created incentives to develop close ties
between local elites and the party in government, as the latter became a common entity to
articulate their interests at the national level of political representation.
Although the MAS had been inching along the path of expansion since 2002, alliances
did not truly materialize until the 2005 general election campaign. Organizations representing
groups as diverse as artisans, microenterprises, pensioners, street vendors, miners working for
cooperatives, and other forms of local organization perceived an alliance with the MAS as a
unique opportunity to achieve parliamentary representation, occupy important positions in the
government, and gain access to government jobs for their affiliates. To a large extent, this pattern
26
of organizational growth mirrored that of the MNR of the 1950s. The party relied upon patronage
distribution and service provision to particular organizations to cultivate electoral support.
Unlike the MNR, however, the MAS also pursued a strategy of diffusion to gain control over
base and “umbrella” organizations,103 either through the inclusion of their leaders on party lists
or by competing in the organization’s internal elections to obtain leadership control.104 The dual
expansion strategy allowed the MAS to grow its base of support and ensure some degree of
governability. It also led to the configuration of a strikingly heterogeneous coalition of grassroots
actors. Further, it generated tensions between core and noncore constituencies, which, as with the
MNR, viewed each other with suspicion and unease. Conflicts between these two constituencies,
particularly over control of economic and political resources and policy, would become frequent,
especially in Morales’ second term.105
In short order, then, the MAS grew from the local to the national level by bringing
together a heterogeneous constituency through different linkage strategies. The electoral payoffs
of such an approach have been significant, and they have helped to consolidate the status of the
MAS as a dominant party. As with the MNR, coalition-building strategies created internal
tensions and strain. Because the MAS developed extensive but also more intensive ties, however,
its capacity to manage and endure those tensions was greater.
Maintaining the MAS’ Broad-based Coalition
According to Alvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s Vice President, the MAS in power can be
best described as a “flexible and negotiated coalition of grassroots actors”.106 The support of
certain allies remains heavily contingent.107 The breadth of the coalition might expand and
contract as a function of the conjuncture and in response to the policies adopted. The party is
backed, however, by an organizational core whose commitment to the party’s goals is strong,
27
and by certain, more intensive ties that were created upon including other sectoral leaders as
candidates for office. This becomes evident when we examine the dynamics of policy-making
within the MAS.
MAS’ allied groups in civil society play an important policy-making role by introducing
new issues and priorities to the agenda. Still, the influence of collective actors on MAS’ national
policy-making varies significantly by policy area, and patterns of grassroots participation can be
best described as neo-corporatist.108 The lack of integration of noncore groups into the party’s
hierarchy has led to a situation where competing collective actors dispute the control of the
ministries whose policies affect their interests. Thus, groups with conflicting views over land
redistribution struggle to dominate the ministry of rural development,109 groups with competing
views on mining activity fight to control the ministry of mining,110 and so on. The resolution of
these disputes, and the policy proposals developed by those ministries, almost always reflects the
balance of power between coalitional partners. The support from many groups is contingent on
the MAS’s capacity to deliver policies that are aligned with their interests. However, the arrival
of grassroots’ representative to Congress, thanks to the MAS’ strategy of diffusion, fostered the
creation of intensive ties, pushing groups to articulate their demands within the MAS and raising
the costs of coalition abandonment. This situation has often led to challenges to the MAS’s
agenda, some of which come from its own support base.
Such challenges are best explained through examples. The case of the Isiboro Sécure
National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) is relevant, for it was a highly destabilizing
moment—a high-intensity crisis that showcases the kinds of conflicts that have emerged between
core and non-core coalitional partners.111 In that instance, the MAS attempted to build a highway
through the middle of a national park, sparking mass protests by indigenous communities living
28
inside the park and by allied non-core organizations, including indigenous movements in the
eastern lowlands and in the Andean highlands. Affected indigenous groups initially demanded
respect to their collective right to be consulted in advance, as guaranteed by the country’s new
constitution. The failure to initiate a process of consultation before sealing a contract to build the
highway sparked a series of protests that threatened to undermine the MAS’ coalition of support.
The mobilization involved violent confrontations between indigenous communities
represented by non-core organizations, on the one hand, and coca growers (and other peasant
groups) on the other hand. Despite the sustained resistance of non-core organized indigenous
groups, and despite the temporary suspension of the construction of the highway through in May
2013, the government has not fully reversed its commitment to building the highway.112 Instead,
it has accommodated the policy preferences of its core constituency, which conceives of the
highway as necessary for expanding the agrarian frontier and improving access to markets for the
goods produced by agricultural producers in the region. That the government’s position aligns
with the preferences of coca growers (and other core peasant groups) is by no means fortuitous.
It reveals that these are the key partners within the coalition.
Ultimately, this conflict revealed the challenges of governing a country while preserving
a broad-based coalition. The conflict exposed the government’s developmentalist policy agenda,
which, supported by the MAS’s core, often comes at the expense of the concerns and priorities of
non-core groups. While the crisis led to a deterioration of the relationship between the MAS and
important indigenous movements, internal strain did not threaten the viability of the coalition as
a whole, and the MAS managed to retain support from key coalitional partners. The crisis did
lead to loss of credibility of the MAS as a party committed to issues of self-rule and indigenous
autonomy, threatening the socio-cultural dimension of its transformative agenda. Yet, it also
29
revealed that the governing party has a strong core that guides policy-making and provides a
solid foundation and mobilizational power for carrying out its desired policies, reforms, and
actions. How far the MAS’s commitment to transformation will go is an empirical question, the
answer to which will depend on the continuing ability of the MAS to retain its coalition even
when crises and internal conflict threaten to undermine its agenda.
Comparing Coalition-Building Experiences The MNR and the MAS are two parties that sought to attain and maintain power via the
construction of broad-based coalitions of support. They espoused similar revolutionary projects,
faced an entrenched political elite that they sought to replace, and confronted economic and/or
social problems that threatened to destabilize their diverse set of coalitional partners. The MAS’
broad-based coalition remains largely in tact after almost ten years in power. At a similar point in
the MNR’s governing trajectory, the party was struggling to retain any of its coalitional partners.
By 1962, the party lost the support of labor, and the peasants were turning toward the military as
its primary ally. Even the middle classes – the party’s core – had largely abandoned the party.
With respect to coalition maintenance, the MAS has clearly out-performed its revolutionary
predecessor. It has also been more successful at promoting its revolutionary goals. It has
continued to pursue its developmentalist project, implementing substantial changes in the
country’s principal economic and social policies.113
What explains the MAS’ continued success and the historic MNR’s early failures in
maintaining its revolutionary agenda? Our analysis demonstrates that each party adopted
different strategies for crafting a broad-based coalition of support. The MNR created its
revolutionary base of support from above. The party developed a small network of middle-class
30
leaders. With the country ripe for change, the party adopted a revolutionary rhetoric and sought
to rapidly expand its base of support to include the more radical and more numerous labor and
peasant movements. To do this, the party pursued a linkage strategy based largely on clientelism.
It quickly built a broad network of support by crafting individual agreements with labor and
sindicato leaders. Each leader provided organizational resources and votes in exchange for
patronage, jobs, and influence. The party’s expansion strategy focused mainly on developing
these particularistic ties throughout the country. Its territorial penetration enabled the creation of
extensive but ultimately weak ties with coalitional partners. The MNR ultimately created a cross-
class coalition that served as a powerful electoral machine. This machine, however, easily
disintegrated when crisis set in.
Whereas the MNR pursued contingent ties with its coalitional partners, the MAS used a
more diverse set of strategies to establish and expand its coalition. With some groups, the MAS
crafted patronage-based arrangements that flourished or floundered depending upon the
fulfillment of promises. It also pursued more integrative linkage and expansion strategies with
other groups. It included local and sectoral leaders as candidates on party lists, tying their
electoral fates to that of the party.114 The MAS therefore pursued strategies of penetration and
diffusion. It fostered the creation of closer ties between local elites and the party,115 shoring up
more enduring support with certain peripheral constituencies by raising the costs of abandoning
the coalition. Consequently, the MAS has been more successful at withstanding major crises that
threatened one primary aspect of its revolutionary project, including the TIPNIS example, and
retaining its support base.
The MNR and the MAS differed in one other key dimension that shaped their capacity to
maintain a heterogeneous coalition of support: the composition of the core constituency. The
31
historic MNR’s core was with the urban middle classes. The MAS’s consisted of the cocaleros
and other rural-based peasant organizations. This difference is important. The middle classes
have historically had an ambiguous role when it comes to promoting the rights of the lower
classes.116 The MNR’s middle class core, while supportive of change, was far from radical in its
objectives. It was also reluctant to share power. Once the party displaced the military and upset
the political and economic dominance of La Rosca, the primary grievances of the middle classes
had been addressed. Their commitment to further revolutionary objectives was tenuous. Given
their pragmatic and ambiguous stance, it was difficult for Paz and other MNR leaders to exact
sacrifice from them. This made negotiating the demands of the party’s coalitional partners very
difficult. The interaction of the party’s middle class core with its much more radical partners
created a fragile base of support for the MNR in a power—one that easily came undone when
threatened by crisis.
The MAS’ core constituency, on the other hand, is more ideologically oriented and
politically driven. The cocaleros are highly demanding of MAS leadership, viewing the party as
a vehicle for their extensive political demands. This more activist core has required almost
constant nurturing by the MAS. Dirigentes spend a lot of time defending Morales’ policies to the
cocaleros and the other peasant federations. The hard work has paid off. The party has
maintained strong links with its core constituency. This is true even though the party has
implemented policies that do not always respond to their primary demands. The MAS cannot
take the support of its core constituency for granted, but the party can rely on that support as it
undertakes the difficult tasks of democratic governance.
Ironically, the ideologically-driven and committed, but not unconditional, support of
MAS’s core allowed the party greater autonomy of action as it constructed its broad-based
32
coalition. The party could not stray programmatically from core demands. It could, however,
pursue more substantive ties with certain groups and actors, including them on its electoral lists
and, eventually, in its governing coalition. The MAS’ coalitional logic was heterogeneous: it
pursued particularistic ties with some, and more intensive ties with other, partners. This gave the
party more flexibility in the face of crisis. The MNR’s coalitional logic was almost exclusively
grounded in particularism. The party’s middle class core was reluctant to share power with labor
or the peasantry in government or in the party. Yet, the MNR needed their support to govern.
The MNR avoided more intensive ties with labor and rural syndicate leaders, choosing to
cultivate patronage-based agreements with them and sharing limited positions of power. In
extending policy influence to the more radical labor sector, the party increasingly alienated its
middle class core.
By 1956, the commitment of the MNR’s core was questionable at best.117 Neither labor
nor the peasantry was a dependable source of support in the absence of patronage. The
particularistic logic that underpinned the MNR’s coalition was difficult to reverse once in place.
Labor and the peasant syndicates could break their alliance with the party without incurring great
costs. The MAS, on the other hand, adopted a more segmented linkage strategy,118 thanks in part
to the more enduring support of its core constituency. While many of its coalitional ties were
extensive and fleeting, the party also developed intensive ties with certain groups, linking their
political fates to the party’s. Like the PJ in Argentina or the PRI in Mexico,119 the MAS has had
greater maneuvering room to shed certain coalitional partners during times of crisis. It can
depend on its core, and parts of its integrated periphery, to weather those crises.
33
Governing for the Long Haul: Some Conclusions
This study has shown that the linkage and expansion strategies used by the historic MNR
and the MAS to establish their broad social coalitions, in combination with each party’s core
type, helped to forge a particular coalitional logic for each party once it achieved power. This
logic largely conditioned how each party negotiated the difficulties of governance while also
retaining the support of (much of) its broad-based coalition. The contingent logic that
underpinned the MNR’s coalition severely limited the party’s ability to impose costs on its
coalitional partners. These coalitional ties were difficult to change (but easy to uproot) once they
were established.
The MAS’ coalitional logic has been more heterogeneous and therefore more flexible and
adaptable to crisis. The cocalero groups at its core limited the party’s ideological flexibility but
enabled it to pursue integrative, power-sharing strategies with certain non-core constituencies.
While some of its coalitional alliances were extensive, contingent, and expendable, others were
intensive and therefore more reliable in the face of governing challenges. The MAS adopted
more diverse linkage and expansion strategies and could impose at times high costs on certain
coalitional partners without threatening the viability of the coalition altogether. In both cases,
how the coalition was crafted conditioned the capacity of each party to manage its coalition over
time while still preserving its agenda. We can learn a lot about the transformative capacity of a
reformist party in power by analyzing the coalitional logic utilized to achieve power in the first
place.
Our analysis also sheds light on the role of organizational resources in influencing
successful party-building, which is high on the agenda of comparative parties.120 Most existing
literature emphasizes the availability of pre-existing organizational networks to explain variation
34
in the emergence and strength of new parties. Our study suggests that having an organizational
network to exploit is important for understanding successful party emergence, but it may not be
sufficient to explain long-term organizational trajectories. The strategies parties use to tap into
those resources are also politically consequential, as they create enduring legacies. The type of
ties cultivated at early stages of development can shape over-time relationships with groups on
the ground. Patterns of integration of existing organizational resources can shape the texture and
outcomes of party politics. This is a potentially rewarding area for further research—one that
deserves much more systematic analysis moving forward.
Finally, the argument developed here can help to explain why some broad-based parties
are more effective than others at weathering the challenges of governance. It should travel to
other instances of reformist parties, explaining the success (or failure) of a vast range of parties
in power, from Venezuela’s PSUV, to the nationalist parties of Mali,121 to the new populist
parties of Western Europe.122 The success or failure of these parties in power is not just a
function of smart policy decisions made by party leaders in the face of economic or social
challenges. It is also a product of how those leaders (and their parties) achieved power to begin
with, and of the strategies they use to share power with coalitional partners.
35
Notes 1 Edward L. Gibson, Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Edward Gibson, “The Populist Road to
Market Reform: Policy and Electoral Coalitions in Argentina and Mexico.” World Politics, 49
(April 1997), 339-370; Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Herbert Kitschelt, The Logics of Party
Formation: Ecological Politics in Belgium and West Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1989); Steven Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine
Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
2 Nicole Bolleyer, "Small parties: From party pledges to government policy," West European
Politics, 30.1 (2007), 121-147.
3 Gibson 1997
4 Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1994); Herbert Kitschelt, “The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative
Analysis,” In collaboration with Anthony J. McGann, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1995).
5 Raul Madrid, “The Rise of Ethnopopulism in Latin America,” World Politics 60.2 (2010), 475-
508. Santiago Anria, “Social Movements, Party Organization, and Populism: Insights from the
Bolivian MAS,” Latin American Politics and Society, 55.3 (2013) 19-46.
6 Steve Ellner, “Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in
Venezuela,” Latin American Perspectives, 40.3 (2013) 63-82.
7 Duncan McDonnell, “Silvio Berlusconi’s Personal Parties: From Forza Italia to the Popolo
Della Libertà,” Political Studies 61 (April 2013), 217–33.
36
8 Jana Morgan, Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011); Jason Seawright, Party-System Collapse: The Roots
of Crisis in Peru and Venezuela (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).
9 Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, and Brandon Van Dyck, “Introduction: Challenges of Party-
Building in Latin America,” in Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge
Domínguez ed. Party-Building in Latin America (n.d.).
10 Donna Lee Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of Ethnic
Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Adrienne LeBas, From
Protest to Parties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
11 Panebianco
12 Adam Przeworski and John D. Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
13 Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor, “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms,”
Political Studies, 44 (1996), 936-957; Kathleen Thelen, “Historical Institutionalism in
Comparative Perspective,” Annual Review of Political Science, 2 (1999), 369-404; Paul Pierson
and Theda Skocpol, “Historical Institutionalism in contemporary political science,” in I.
Katznelson and H.V. Miller eds., Political Science. State of the Discipline. (New York: Norton,
2002), 693-721.
14 Jennifer Cyr and James Mahoney, “The Enduring Influence of Historical Structural
Approaches.” Handbook of Latin American Politics, eds. Peter Kingstone and Deborah Yashar.
(New York: Routledge Press, 2011).
37
15 Richard Locke and Kathleen Thelen, “Apples and organics revised: contextualized
comparisons and the study of comparative labor politics,” Political Sociology, 23.3 (1995) 337-
367.
16 Gibson 1996
17 Although his study focuses on conservative parties, the conceptual distinction between core
and noncore constituencies is amenable to the study of other types of parties that must expand
their electoral base to successfully contest elections.
18 Przeworski and Sprague
19 Gibson 1996. The term “segmented strategies” is taken from Luna (2014). Juan Pablo Luna,
Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014).
20 Herbert Kitschelt, “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities,”
Comparative Political Studies, 33 (6-7) (2000) 845–79; Juan Pablo Luna, “Segmented Party–
Voter Linkages in Latin America: The Case of the UDI,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 42
(02) (2010) 325–56.
21 Gibson 1997
22 Gibson 1997, 366
23 Panebianco, xiii
24 Panebianco, 50
25 James Malloy, Bolivia: The Uncompleted Revolution (Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1970).
26 Its leader, Evo Morales, was re-elected for a third time with an overwhelming majority in
October 2014, and the party is poised to capture a majority in both chambers of Congress.
38
27 Forrest Hylton, “Old wine, new bottles: In search of dialectics,” Dialectic Anthropology, 35
(2011), 243-247; Waltraud Q Morales, “From Revolution to Revolution: Bolivia’s National
Revolution and the ‘Re-Founding’ Revolution of Evo Morales,” The Latin Americanist, (March
2011), 131-144; John Crabtree, “From the MNR to the MAS: Populism, Parties, the State, and
Social Movements in Bolivia since 1952.” In Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia J. Arnson ed., Latin
American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, (Washington, DC: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2013), 269–93.
28 An exception is Crabtree’s (2013) descriptive assessment of both parties.
29 Malloy 1970.
30 Malloy 322
31 Malloy 120
32 Malloy 120
33 Malloy 136-7
34 Crabtree 272; Melvin Burke and James Malloy, “From National Populism to National
Corporatism: The Case of Bolivia (1952-1970),” Studies in Comparative International
Development, 9 (Spring 1974), 49.
35 Malloy 1970, 284
36 Healy and Paulson 2000, 7
37 Alexander 1958, 47
38 Anria 2013
39 Jason Tockman, “Instituting Power: Power relations, institutional hybridity, and indigenous
self-governance in Bolivia” (Ph.D Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2014).
39
40 Lesley Gill, Teetering on the Rim : Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of
the Bolivian State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
41 Sian Lazar, El Alto, Rebel City (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)
42 While relocated miners played an important organizational role in forming the MAS, the coca
grower movement preceded these mid-1980s developments.
43 Interview with Filemón Escóbar, MAS founder, Cochabamba, 26 March 2013.
44 Nancy Grey Postero, “Morales’s MAS Government,” Latin American Perspectives, 37 (3)
(172) (2010) 22.
45 Van Cott
46 The following sections rely extensively on two classic works that analyze the MNR’s twelve-
year hegemonic rule (Malloy 1970, Mitchell 1977).
47 Christopher Mitchell The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule
(New York: Praeger Publishers,1977), 26.
48 Mitchell 23-4
49 Mitchell 145
50 Malloy 131-4
51 Malloy 137
52 Christopher Mitchell The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule
(New York: Praeger Publishers,1977), 26.
53 Mitchell 28-30
54 Malloy 146
55 Alexander, Robert J. 1958
56 Gibson 1996, 10
40
57 Malloy 175
58 Mitchell 44
59 Mitchell 46
60 Jorge Dandler, “Peasant Sindicatos and the Process of Cooptation in Bolivia.” In June Nash,
Jorge Dandler, and Nicholas S. Hopkins eds., Popular Participation in Social Change:
Cooperatives, Collectives, and Nationalized Industry, (The Hague, Paris: Mouton Publishers,
1976), 341-52.
61 Jennifer Cyr, “Making or Breaking Politics: Social Conflicts and Party-System Change in
Democratic Bolivia,” Studies in Comparative International Development, (2014).
62 Mitchell 17
63 Mitchell 6
64 Dandler 344
65 Dandler 343-4
66 Mitchell 49
67 Crabtree 275
68 Led by Siles Suazo, 1956-60.
69 Mitchell 49-50
70 Hennessy 198
71 Crabtree 273
72 Mitchell 7
73 Dandler 345
74 Alexander 1958, 55. It is notable that the MNR maintained stable, friendly ties with the United
States throughout much of its time in office. The fear of a US-backed coup—patent in other parts
41
of the region at the time—is not likely to have driven Siles’ behavior. Instead, as a leader of the
Right-wing camp of the party, Siles appeared to view the harsh economic plan as an appropriate
redress of the economic crisis and also a mechanism for debilitating the party’s Left-wing, which
had begun to increasingly clash with the party’s (Right-wing) core (Alexander 1958, 52-4).
75 Mitchell 67-73
76 C.A.M. Hennessy, “Shifting Forces in the Bolivian Revolution,” The World Today, 20.5
(1964) 199.
77 Mitchell
78 Jorge I. Domínguez and Christopher N. Mitchell, “The Roads not Taken: Institutionalization
and Political Parties in Cuba and Bolivia,” Comparative Politics, 9.2 (1977), 180
79 Mitchell 86
80 Mitchell 55
81 The peasantry eventually consolidated its partnership with the military in the Pacto Militar-
Campesino, which emerged after the 1964 overthrow of the MNR.
82 The “political instrument”—as the MAS is still referred to by its founders—was created on the
idea of achieving the “self-representation” of popular groups. For a discussion, see Anria 23.
83 Gonzalo Rojas Ortuste, “La Elección de Alcaldes En Los Municipios Del País En 1999-2000:
Persistencia de La Coalición Nacional.” Opiniones y Análisis, 49 (2000), 83–113; Salvador
Romero Ballivián, Geografía Electoral de Bolivia: Así Votan Los Bolivianos, ILDIS (2003).
84 Przeworski and Sprague 70
85 Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy (Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
42
86 Albro has described this period in terms of a “plural popular” strategy of coalition building, in
which indigenous issues became the framing plank for successful political articulation.
Robert.Albro, “Indigenous in the Plural in Bolivian Oppositional Politics,” Bulletin of Latin
American Research, 24 (2005), 433–53.
87 Quiroga declined Morales’ invitation, asserting personal reasons (interview with Quiroga).
Morales then selected Antonio Peredo, a renowned journalist and teacher associated with the
Bolivian Communist Party (PCB) (interview with Peredo).
88 Sven Harten, The Rise of Evo Morales and the MAS (London: Zed Books, 2011), 135.
89 Jeffery R. Webber “Carlos Mesa, Evo Morales, and a Divided Bolivia,” Latin American
Perspectives, 37 (3) (172) (2010), 51–70.
90 (Author cite)
91 (Author cite)
92 These organizations include the Unique Confederation of Rural Laborers of Bolivia
(CSUTCB); the Syndicalist Confederation of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia (CSCIB); and
the Bartolina Sisa National Confederation of Campesino, Indigenous, and Native Women of
Bolivia (CNMCIOB-BS).
93 Crabtree 284
94 Thomas Grisaffi, “‘All of Us Are Presidents’: Radical Democracy and Citizenship in the
Chapare Province, Bolivia,” Critique of Anthropology, 33 (1) (2013), 57.
95 In the 2009 presidential election the MAS received 96.34 percent of their vote, and in the 2010
municipal election it received 100 percent of their vote.
96 When asked about the increment of fuel prices in 2010 (an event known as the Gasolinazo),
Segundina Orellana commented: “the ministers made a mistake, they fooled the president.”
43
(Interview with Orellana, President, Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, 18 March
2013). The underlying assumption is that ministers, especially those who do not come from the
ranks of a trusted social organization, are not fully committed to the MAS and are instead driven
by personal motivations.
97 Grisaffi 60
98 The policy eliminates forced eradication of coca crops but sets a restriction on the amount of
coca that farmers can legally grow. It also replaces the old regime of police and military
repression for a community-led form of “social control”. Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl,
“Social Control Bolivia’s New Approach to Coca Reduction,” Latin American Perspectives, 37
(4) (2010), 205.
99 (Author cite)
100 (Author cite)
101 Harten 131
102 Moira Zuazo, ¿Cómo Nació El MAS? La Ruralización de La Política En Bolivia: Entrevistas
a 85 Parlamentarios Del Partido (La Paz, Bolivia: Fundación Ebert, 2008), 36-41; Crabtree 285;
Santiago Anria, A Movement-Based Party in Power: The Bolivian MAS (Movement Toward
Socialism) in Comparative Perspective (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Ph.D
Dissertation, N.d.).
103 Zuazo 2008
104 Anria 2013
105 UNIR, Perfiles de La Conflictividad Social En Bolivia (2009-2011) (La Paz, Bolivia:
Fundación UNIR, 2012).
106 Interview with Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s Vice President, 4 May 4 2013.
44
107 See also Fernando Mayorga, Dilemas (La Paz: CESU/Plural Editores, 2011).
108 Anria n.d
109 These include both “peasant” and “indigenous” organizations.
110 These include both “unionized” and “cooperative” mineworkers.
111 Other examples include the ongoing frictions among peasant organizations and indigenous
organizations over issues of land redistribution, and the recurrent confrontations among
unionized mineworkers and miners working in cooperatives over the control of mining areas
(Author citation redacted for review purposes).
112 Interview with Álvaro García Linera.
113 Linda Farthing and Benjamin H. Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia : Continuity and Change, 1st edition.
(Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014).
114 The historic MNR could not have adopted a similar integrative strategy in the 1950s, since the
sheer number of elected positions at that time was greatly reduced. Still, given the reluctance of
the MNR’s core constituency to share power in any way with its more radical coalitional
partners, it is unclear that the MNR would have utilized this strategy even if the number of
elected positions were comparable.
115 Panebianco 50
116 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and
Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
117 Mitchell (1977) argues that the 1956 stabilization plan marked the beginning of the end of the
MNR. Our analysis suggests that the end of the revolution rested instead in its foundations. The
MNR constructed an ideologically vague, organizationally weak coalition of lower- and middle-
class sectors, the support of which was cultivated via patronage and clientelism. These
45
characteristics made the coalition vulnerable to hardship. The coalition’s origins contained the
roots of its own demise.
118 Luna 2010
119 Gibson 1997
120 Levitsky, et al., n.d.
121 Richard Vengroff, “Governance and the Transition to Democracy: Political Parties and the
Party System in Mali,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 31.4 (1993), 541-562.
122 Paul Taggart, “New Populist Parties in Western Europe,” West European Politics, 19.1
(1995), 34-51.