The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), an indigenous party founded in the mid-1990s, has dominated Bolivian politics in recent years. The MAS has won every single election held in Bolivia since 2004 by a large margin. In the 2009 general elections, for example, the MAS and its leader, Evo Morales, captured sixty-four percent of the valid votes, almost forty percentage points ahead of its closest rival. The MAS currently controls not only the presidency of Bolivia, but approximately two-thirds of the seats in the legislature, and many important departmental and municipal offices as well. The traditional parties, meanwhile, have crumbled and the political opposition is in disarray.

The MAS’s rise to dominance is surprising given that indigenous parties had traditionally fared poorly in Bolivia. A number of indigenous parties emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but none of these parties won more than a small fraction of the vote. The MAS initially gave little indication that it would enjoy any more success than previous indigenous parties. Indeed, it won only three percent of the vote in the initial elections in which it competed. In the 2002 general elections, however, the MAS finished a close second, and it has won every election held in Bolivia since.