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Currently under review: Please do not cite with authors’ permission.  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.