Competitive Authoritarianism in Morales’s Bolivia: Skewing Arenas of Competition

Abstract

The attempt to classify Bolivia under Evo Morales has yielded a bewildering range of regime labels. While most scholars label it a democracy with adjectives, systematic appraisals of the regime have been scant. This article aims fill this gap by providing a more systematic evaluation, putting special emphasis on features of Bolivia’s electoral playing field. It evaluates the slope of key fields of competition (electoral, legislative, judicial, and mass media), finding abundant evidence that all four were substantively slanted in favor of the incumbent. During the MAS reign, political competition was genuine but fundamentally unfree and unfair, because the ruling party benefited from a truncated supply of electoral candidates; much greater access to finance; a partisan electoral management body; supermajorities in the legislature, used to dispense authoritarian legalism; a captured and weaponized judiciary; and a co-opted mass media ecosystem. Contrary to most extant characterizations, the regime is best categorized as competitive authoritarian.

Assessing the Impact of the MAS Regime in Bolivia

“…This then allowed Morales's government to easily co‐opt sections of the labour movement's leadership to form a labour officialdom, leaving the COB unable to challenge the continuation of the neoliberal structure of the economy, and represent the majority of the country's working classes. McNelly (2020) also focuses on the diminishing role of social organisations as the MAS regime gradually became entrenched as the party of government; finally, Sánchez‐Sibony (2021) emphasises that during the MAS reign, political competition was genuine but fundamentally unfree and unfair, because the ruling party benefited from a truncated supply of electoral candidates; much greater access to finance; a partisan electoral management body; supermajorities in the legislature used to dispense authoritarian legalism; a captured and weaponised judiciary; and a co‐opted mass media ecosystem.…”