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Societal Protest in Post-Stabilization Bolivia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Moisés Arce  and
Roberta Rice
Moisés Arce
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
Roberta Rice
Affiliation:
University of Toronto at Scarborough
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Abstract

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Bolivia was the poster child for economic liberalization policies adopted throughout Latin America since the 1970s. The country is also currently viewed as a place where the neoliberal or market-oriented economic model has been exhausted, as indicated by high levels of societal protest and recent democratic instability. Using available subnational data from Bolivia, we examine the determinants of societal protest across the country's nine provinces for the 1995–2005 period. Consistent with recent literature, we find that provinces with higher levels of political competition have lower levels of societal protest. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, which suggests that neoliberal reforms depoliticize and demobilize collective actors, we find that economic liberalization increases the level of protest activity. Taken together, the article draws attention to the paradoxical effect of neoliberalism to simultaneously debilitate certain types of popular resistance and activate others.

Resumo

Resumo

Bolivia era considerado como un caso emblemático de las políticas de liberalización económica adoptadas en América Latina durante la década de los setentas. En la actualidad el país es percibido como un lugar donde el modelo neoliberal, o de economía de mercado, ha sido agotado, tal como lo indican los altos niveles de protesta social y la inestabilidad política reciente. A partir de datos subnacionales, examinamos los determinantes de la protesta social en las nueve provincias de Bolivia para el periodo 1995–2005. De manera consistente con la literatura reciente, encontramos que las provincias con altos niveles de competencia política tienen bajos niveles de protesta social. Contrario a la sabiduría convencional, la cual sugiere que las reformas neoliberales despolitizan y desmovilizan a los actores colectivos, encontramos que la liberalización económica aumenta los niveles de protesta. En síntesis el artículo llama la atención sobre el efecto paradójico del neoliberalismo: simultáneamente debilita ciertas formas de protesta popular mientras activa otras.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , 2009 , pp. 88 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

*

A previous version of this article was presented at the 27th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, September 2007. The authors would like to thank Paul Bellinger and the anonymous LARR reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Arce's research was supported financially by a research board grant from the University of Missouri.

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