European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe

No. 108 (2019): July-December, pp. 109-129

www.erlacs.org

The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism:

Policies, elites and the MAS government

Jonas Wolff
Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)

Abstract
With the ebbing of the pink tide, the MAS government in Bolivia remains as one of the most
successful leftist governments that had been elected throughout Latin America since the late
1990s. In order to better understand this surprising success story, this paper analyses the
political economy of the post-neoliberal model that has taken shape under MAS rule. More
specifically, it looks at the interaction between the strategic orientation and the specific fea-
tures of economic policy-making in Bolivia, on the one hand, and the evolving relationship
of the MAS government with the country’s economic elites, on the other. The paper argues
that Bolivia’s specific version of post-neoliberalism has facilitated increasingly cooperative
relations between the government and economic elites, while the latter have themselves
contributed to the consolidation of the former. At the same time, the analysis of the political
economy of Bolivian post-neoliberalism also reveals its inherent fragility. Keywords: Post-
neoliberalism, leftist turn, pink tide, economic elites, Bolivia.

Resumen: La economía política del postneoliberalismo boliviano: Política, elites y el

gobierno de MAS
Con el reflujo de la marea rosa, el gobierno del MAS en Bolivia queda como uno de los
casos más exitosos de los gobierno de izquierda que habían sido elegidos en América Latina
desde finales de los años noventa. Para comprender mejor esta sorprendente historia de éxi-
to, este artículo analiza la economía política del modelo post-neoliberal que ha tomado for-
ma bajo el gobierno del MAS. Más específicamente, analiza la interacción entre la orienta-
ción estratégica y las características específicas de la formulación de políticas económicas
en Bolivia, por un lado, y la relación en evolución del gobierno del MAS con las élites eco-
nómicas del país, por otro. Se argumenta que la versión específica del post-neoliberalismo
de Bolivia ha facilitado relaciones cada vez más cooperativas entre el gobierno y las élites
económicas, quienes, por su parte, han contribuido a la consolidación de este modelo post-
neoliberal. Al mismo tiempo, el análisis de la economía política del posneoliberalismo boli-
viano también revela su fragilidad inherente. Palabras clave: Postneoliberalismo, giro iz-
quierdista, marea rosa, élites económicas, Bolivia.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.32992/ERLACS.10468. © Jonas Wolff. Open Access article distributed

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110 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

Introduction

With the election of right-wing presidents in Argentina, Brazil and El Salvador,

the political about-face taken by Ecuador’s president Lenín Moreno as well as
the crises facing Nicaragua and Venezuela, the much-discussed pink tide that
swept Latin America in the early 2000s is clearly over. In fact, of the series of
more or less leftist governments that had been elected throughout the region
since the late 1990s, only two remain that can still reasonably claim success:
the government led by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia and the
administration of the Frente Amplio in Uruguay. The case of Bolivia is particu-
larly surprising, given the profound crisis this traditionally highly unstable
country experienced in the early 2000s. Early on, liberal observers predicted
that the rule of leftist “populists” like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales “will lead
to inflation, greater poverty and inequality” (Castañeda, 2006, p. 42), but after
more than 13 years of MAS rule, poverty rates and inequality have gone down
significantly, inflation remains low, and today Bolivia is one of the few coun-
tries in the region that still have significant growth rates (CEPAL, 2018b; IMF,
2018). Certainly, far from all is well in Bolivia. But the comparison between
the current situation in Bolivia and Brazil should give pause to those, like Jorge
Castañeda, who contrasted the promising reformist strategy of the Workers
Party in Brazil and the doomed approach of “radical populism”. At the same
time, comparing contemporary Bolivia and Venezuela also gives food for
thought to those who saw the latter country as “the only case of a consolidated
or truly postneoliberal state”, while deploring the lack of “substantive changes
required to move beyond neoliberalism” in Bolivia (Veltmeyer, 2012, p. 71).
Against this background, the question arises: how to explain the MAS gov-
ernment’s relative success. 1 The aim of this paper is to contribute to closing
this research gap by investigating the political economy of post-neoliberalism
as it has taken shape in Bolivia under president Evo Morales (2006-). More
specifically, I focus on the interaction between the strategic orientation and the
specific features of economic policy-making in Bolivia, on the one hand, and
the evolving relationship of the MAS government with the country’s economic
elites, on the other. 2 In terms of the economic elites, the following analysis
centres on the business sectors in the eastern lowland department of Santa
Cruz, given that Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s economic “powerhouse” outside the
gas and mining sectors (Eaton, 2017, p. 142) and home to the country’s most
powerful economic elites, which were key actors in the opposition against the
MAS government during its first years (Bowen, 2014, p. 102). 3
The argument that I will develop and substantiate in the following consists
of four steps. First, I suggest that there have been significant changes in the
strategic orientation and the specific features of economic policy-making in
Bolivia that can be usefully understood as post-neoliberal. In contrast to the
MAS’ more radical rhetoric but in line with the notion of post-neoliberalism,
these changes are qualified by important continuities both with the immediate
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 111

neoliberal past and with more long-term structural features of the Bolivian de-
velopment model (for instance, its extractivist nature). Second, the overall
thrust and key features of post-neoliberalism as pursued by the MAS govern-
ment have facilitated the emergence of increasingly cooperative relations with
the country’s economic elites. Third, while structural factors help explain why
this rapprochement was possible in the first place, agency on both sides has
been important in producing the shift from confrontation to cooperation as well
as in shaping economic policy-making. Fourth, this rapprochement with key
business sectors has, on the one hand, facilitated a relatively good macroeco-
nomic performance but has, on the other, also systematically reduced the MAS
government’s potential to initiate a structural transformation of the Bolivian
economy. In this sense, therefore, the political economy of actually existing
post-neoliberalism in Bolivia also helps understand its fragility, which, I con-
clude, is becoming particularly manifest in the current context and renders the
future of the MAS government’s success story far from assured.

Key features of actually existing post-neoliberalism in Bolivia

In the debate about changes and continuities in economic policies in Latin

America since the turn of the century, the term post-neoliberalism has been
introduced to grasp “the range of policy experiments currently occurring
throughout the Americas” with the aim “to emphasize the discontinuity within
continuity in the policy practices of many progressive governments” (Macdon-
ald & Ruckert, 2009, p. 2). The general idea behind this concept is that post-
neoliberalism does not replace but modify and transform neoliberalism: It
“signals a shift away from – though not necessarily a wholesale break with –
the neoliberal tenets of privatisation, marketization, commodification, and de-
regulation” (Marston, 2015, p. 247). 4 This turning away does not follow “a set
of strict policies or a clearly identifiable policy regime” (Ruckert et al., 2017,
p. 1584) and, thus, can take very different forms. This diversity notwithstand-
ing, the common – if frequently implicit – assumption in the literature is that
policies and practices in order to be termed post-neoliberal have to have some-
how progressive qualities, that is, they have to aim at redistributing the access
to and control of resources and power in an egalitarian direction (Yates & Bak-
ker, 2014, 70-71). 5 In this section, I will briefly assess the strategic orientation
and specific features of economic policy-making in Bolivia under MAS rule by
focusing on change and continuity in three key areas which are crucial for the
debate about whether Bolivia has experienced a turn to post-neoliberalism or
not: (1) the role of the state in the economy; (2) fiscal policy; and (3) agricul-
tural policy and land reform. 6
With a view to the role of the state in the economy, there is no doubt that
Bolivia under MAS rule has shifted significantly from a predominantly market-
led (neoliberal) model to a much more state-led development model. The most
obvious indicator of this shift is the consistent and significant increase in pub-
112 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

lic investment, more than doubling the pre-MAS levels both in absolute terms
and as a share of GDP (Bolivia, 2016, p. 194; IMF, 2017, p. 60; Webber, 2016,
p. 1865). According to Bolivia’s National Development Plan, for instance,
public investment has grown from 5-7 per cent of GDP between 2000 and 2005
to 9-10 per cent between 2007 and 2010 to around 13 per cent since 2015 (Bo-
livia, 2016, p. 194). While public investment in infrastructure represents an
important share, investment in productive sectors (which had been minimal in
the pre-MAS era) has seen the most significant increase (IMF, 2017, p. 60).
Most of this productive public investment benefited extractive industries and,
in particular, the hydrocarbon sector (Radhuber, 2015, 102).
Directly related to this is the recovery and expansion of public enterprises.
The most emblematic post-neoliberal project in this context was certainly the
announced nationalization of the country’s hydrocarbon sector that was sup-
posed to reverse its de facto privatization in the 1980s and 1990s. The actual
scope of this nationalization was much more moderate than the government’s
rhetoric would suggest (Arze & Gómez, 2013, pp. 75-84), but it still has
brought a significant transformation of the state’s role in the hydrocarbon sec-
tor: By legally re-establishing its sovereignty over the country’s oil and gas, the
state “recovered the right to commercialize its hydrocarbons” (Kaup, 2010, p.
129), and, through negotiated takeovers, the revitalized state-owned oil and gas
company YPFB officially took control of the different segments (exploration,
production, transport and storage) that had been privatized during the 1990s
(Kaup, 2010, p. 130). Even if the operational capacity of YPFB remains lim-
ited in comparison with the foreign companies that, de facto, continue to be
key actors in hydrocarbon exploration and extraction (Arze & Gómez, 2013,
pp. 79-81), these changes have significantly increased the direct role of the
public sector in Bolivia’s gas and oil sector.
This nationalization is the most prominent part of an overall structural
change that concerns an increasing role of public enterprises (Loza, 2013, pp.
72-73; Radhuber, 2014, 2015). While in 2005 public companies received only
4.4 per cent of all state expenses, in 2011 they received 37.4 per cent (Ra-
dhuber, 2014, p. 284). State-owned companies have also become an important
source of public investment (IMF, 2017, p. 60). In general, the significant in-
crease in the role of public enterprises signals a clear-cut turning away from the
neoliberal emphasis on private business. Yet, while public enterprises have
been established in a whole range of areas, 7 in macroeconomic terms these
changes have been clearly concentrated in the extractive sector and even there
they have not meant a displacement of private companies (for the mining sec-
tor, see Andreucci & Radhuber, 2017).
The significant increase in the economic activities of the public sector also
has direct implications for the second key area: fiscal policy. During the first
years of the MAS government, overall fiscal policy was quite conservative,
with budget surpluses and a massive accumulation of foreign exchange re-
serves. However, in response to external shocks, including the global financial
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 113

crises (2008-2009) and the fall in the global commodity prices (since 2014),
this trend was reversed, revealing a pattern of countercyclical spending that is
typical for Keynesian – rather than neoliberal – economic policies (CEPAL,
2018a, p. 89; IMF, 2018, p. 8; Loza, 2013, pp. 99-102; Webber, 2011, p. 10).
Generally speaking, the significant rise in public spending reported above
was enabled by corresponding increases in state revenue. When comparing tax
revenue (in percentage of GDP) for 1990 and 2015, Bolivia has seen one of the
most spectacular increases in the region (CEPAL, 2018a, pp. 48-49). During
the MAS years, tax revenue increased from 18.5 per cent of GDP in 2005 to
23.2 per cent in 2015, while total revenue – including nontax income – rose
from 28.2 per cent of GDP to 35.7 per cent (CEPAL, 2018b). In addition, with
the growth of public enterprises, state revenue generated by these state-owned
companies has also seen an important increase (see Radhuber, 2014, p. 253).
To an important extent, the increase in state revenue reflects the changes in
the hydrocarbon sector discussed above. In 2005, the introduction of a Direct
Hydrocarbon Tax (IDH) of 32 per cent de facto raised the royalties, which had
been reduced to 18 per cent in the 1990s, to 50 per cent again (Arze & Gómez,
2013, p. 75; Kaup, 2010, p. 129). Outside the extractive sector, tax income has
similarly increased, most notably revenue from the corporate income tax (Ra-
dhuber, 2014, p. 256). The overall structure (and regressive impact) of Boliv-
ia’s tax system, however, has hardly changed: Indirect taxes on goods and ser-
vices (mainly VAT) continue to dominate tax revenue, while taxes on personal
income remain almost irrelevant and dramatically low also by regional stand-
ards (CEPAL, 2018a, p. 49).
Finally, in the area of agricultural policy and land reform, the MAS gov-
ernment has adopted important initiatives, in particular when it comes to accel-
erating land titling to indigenous and peasant communities, but it has largely
(and increasingly) done so in ways that have allowed for simultaneously sup-
porting the expansion of agribusiness in the Bolivian lowlands (Colque et al.,
2016; Webber, 2017). On the one hand, the MAS government has accelerated
and intensified the second agrarian reform that had been initiated in 1996. Dur-
ing the MAS years an annual average of 3.93 (2007-2009) and 3.30 millions of
hectares (2010-2014) has been titled, in contrast to 1.13 million of hectares per
year in the period before (1996-2006). 8 Accelerated land titling has mainly
benefited indigenous Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs), which under
MAS rule have received twice as much land titles per year as in the decade
before (Colque et al., 2016, pp. 176-177), as well as peasant communities and
small property holders, which have received an increasing share in the latter
MAS period (2010-2014) (Colque et al., 2016, p. 179; Webber, 2017, p. 340).
In addition, the MAS government has adopted active policies in support of
food security and sovereignty benefiting small landholders, for instance, via
the state-owned Empresa de Apoyo a la Producción de Alimentos (EMAPA)
(Arze & Gómez, 2013, pp. 95-99; Webber, 2017, p. 332).
114 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

At the same time, observers note a significant change during the MAS
years. The first years were characterized by a serious attempt to break “with
neoliberal policy in agrarian matters” (Webber 2017, p. 345), which included
not only a clear-cut decrease in land titling in favour of agricultural enterprises
(Colque et al., 2016, p. 163) but also an explicit “fight against the persistence
of the latifundio” (Colque et al., 2016, p. 171). In general, most of the lands
titled were actually not redistributed between those with large landholdings and
those with little or none, but consisted in state-owned property (Arze &
Gómez, 2013, p. 92; Ormachea & Ramírez, 2013, p. 82). But during the first
years of the MAS rule, at least a relevant share (27 per cent) of the lands dis-
tributed to indigenous TCOs actually was “the result of expropriation or partial
expropriation” (Webber, 2017, p. 338). This has clearly changed in recent
years, coinciding with the rapprochement between the MAS government and
the agribusiness sector in the Bolivian lowlands that will be discussed below
(Eaton, 2017, pp. 139-174; Ormachea & Ramírez, 2013; Webber, 2017; Wolff,
2016). Between 2010 and 2014, the share of land titles benefiting agricultural
enterprises has grown again, with a focus on the most productive “strategic
zones” of expansion in the lowlands (Colque et al., 2016, p. 183; Webber,
2016, pp. 341-342).
In sum, we can observe significant changes that break with or, at least, no-
tably diverge from neoliberal guidelines. At the same time, in line with the no-
tion of post-neoliberalism outlined above, change in all three areas has been
qualified by important continuities both with the immediate neoliberal past and
with long-term structural features of the Bolivian development model, most
notably with its extractivist nature. The result is a neo-developmentalist agen-
da, which is characterized by a significantly increased role of the state and an
emphasis on social inclusion, but which relies on a thriving commodities sec-
tor, including privately run agribusiness.

Rapprochement between MAS government and economic elites

As I have shown elsewhere, the relationship between the MAS government

and Bolivia’s business elites has changed significantly during the more than 13
years since the first election of Evo Morales (Wolff, 2016; see also Eaton,
2017, pp. 139-174; Ormachea & Ramírez, 2013; Veltmeyer, 2012; Webber,
2016, 2017). 9 When Morales took power in early 2006, this marked the defi-
nite end of Bolivia’s pacted democracy (democracia pactada) (Mayorga, 2009,
pp. 1-35). Ever since Bolivia, with the adoption of the New Economic Policy
in 1985, turned to market-oriented, neoliberal reforms, business people and
market-friendly technocrats had managed crucial areas of economic policy,
while economic elites, in general, enjoyed reliable direct and indirect access to
the political arena (Conaghan, 1996; Eaton, 2011, pp. 298-299). During the
first years of the MAS government, in contrast, economic elites saw their polit-
ical influence wane dramatically. First, with the traditional political parties vir-
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 115

tually disappearing from the scene, economic elites lost a crucial vehicle of
political influence (even if remaining conservative parties retained some veto
power in Congress during the first years of the MAS government). Second, at
the executive level, cabinet members included much less people with ties to
business elites and interests. Third, with the rise of the MAS, a broad range of
popular sector groups and organizations gained significantly in access to the
political arena – at the expense of traditional elites that had dominated politics
in previous decades, including business leaders, groups, and associations
(Wolff, 2018). This loss in political influence, most notably, concerned the
business elites from the country’s economically most vibrant region, the east-
ern lowland department of Santa Cruz, where an important share of Bolivia’s
export-oriented agribusiness is located (Eaton, 2011, 2017, pp. 139-174).
At the same time, the MAS government meant an actual threat to vital in-
terests of economic elites in general and in Santa Cruz in particular. This, most
notably, concerned the announced increase of state control over the economy,
including through the nationalization of entire sectors, an emphasis on redis-
tributive social policies, as well as the proclaimed agrarian revolution, which
explicitly targeted large landholders and agribusiness in the country’s lowlands
(Gray, 2010). As a consequence, during the first years of president Morales,
economic elites throughout the country but most notably in the lowland de-
partments, including Santa Cruz, joined the traditional political elites in openly
resisting the MAS government (Bowen, 2014; Eaton, 2011). Yet, after the con-
frontation had brought the country to the brink of civil war, in October 2008 a
compromise was reached in Congress that enabled the convocation of a refer-
endum on a revised draft of the new constitution (Böhrt, 2009). As I have
shown elsewhere, this compromise and the subsequent popular approval of the
new constitution initiated a new phase which was characterized by increasing
signs of splits between representatives of the economic and the political elites
as well as by first instances of dialogue between the former and the MAS gov-
ernment. In a second phase (since 2013), this rapprochement gave way to in-
creasingly close cooperation, with an astonishingly low level of public conflict
between the parties (Wolff, 2016, pp. 129-130).
Some observers have tried to make sense of this remarkable shift from con-
frontation to accommodation and collaboration by arguing that the MAS gov-
ernment has essentially given up on its transformative agenda. 10 In this section,
I want to present a slightly different reading. Focusing on the three policy areas
discussed in the previous section, I will argue that the overall thrust and key
features of post-neoliberalism as it has taken shape in Bolivia under MAS rule
have provided the structural context that has enabled the rapprochement be-
tween the government and Bolivia’s economic elites. The question of agency is
addressed in the subsequent section.
When it comes to the role of the state in the economy, a first important ele-
ment is that the policies of nationalization very much focused on foreign com-
panies and, therefore, only marginally affected the domestic economic elites.
116 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

Generally speaking, the notable increase in the role of the Bolivian state in the
economy centred on a few strategic sectors only (hydrocarbons, provision of
certain basic services), leaving most of the domestic economy untouched. The
compromise on the new constitution also reduced the threat perception on the
part of business sectors in that it, for instance, deleted a clause that would have
allowed expropriation of private property once it does not fulfil “a social func-
tion”. 11 What is more, many private businesses have benefited from the in-
crease in public investment: directly, through state contracts (in construction
and commerce); indirectly, through improvements in the physical infrastructure
of the country (Gray, 2010, p. 67).
From the perspective of economic elites, the problem with public invest-
ment is usually not the investment as such but the way it is financed. 12 In this
sense, fiscal policy comes into play. The increasing share of state revenue col-
lected through corporate income tax does imply a certain additional burden on
private business. But, as seen above, the bulk of increased tax and nontax in-
come has come from the changes to the hydrocarbon sector and, therefore,
again only marginally affected vital interests of the domestic economic elites.
In addition, expansive fiscal policies usually worry economic elites because
they expect them to drive inflation and, thereby, risk monetary stability. In this
regard, the MAS government’s fairly moderate and pragmatic – countercycli-
cal – approach, which centred on guaranteeing macroeconomic stability (Ma-
drid et al., 2010, p. 157), proved important, as did the fact that the government,
from the very beginning, effectively protected the area of economic policy-
making from the direct influence and participation of social (movement) organ-
izations (Stefanoni, 2012, p. 231). 13
For the Santa Cruz-based economic elites, the area of agricultural policy
and land reform was arguably the most important one, as the proclaimed agrar-
ian revolution directly threatened the very core of the business model of large
landholders and export-oriented agribusiness. It is not by chance that among
the key concessions made by the MAS when revising the constitutional draft
“protections for current landowners in Santa Cruz [and elsewhere]” featured
prominently (Eaton, 2011, p. 297): In contrast to the original proposal, a non-
retroactivity clause was introduced that exempted all existing agrarian property
from the new constitutional maximum size of large land properties of 5,000
hectares (Böhrt, 2009, p. 103). In line with this concession, as mentioned
above, efforts at redistributing land by expropriating private landholders, which
were already limited during the first years of the MAS government, effectively
subsided in later years, with continuing efforts at land reform drawing on state
property. In general, agribusiness in the Bolivian lowlands continued to grow
even during the first years of the MAS government (Webber, 2017, p. 338). As
Eaton (2017) has argued, this reflects the structural power of largescale agri-
cultural and livestock producers (from Santa Cruz, in particular), whose crucial
role as providers of essential foodstuffs for the domestic market de facto turned
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 117

them into key players for the government’s food security and sovereignty
agenda.

The question of agency

While, as I have argued above, the structural features of actually existing post-
neoliberalism as it has taken shape in contemporary Bolivia help explain why
the rapprochement between the government and economic elites was possible,
in this section I argue that agency on both sides has been important in actually
bringing it about. The role of agency was crucial in two regards: First, it was an
interactive dynamic of signalling an (incipient) dialogue that produced the shift
from confrontation to cooperation; second, the policy agreements reached in
the resulting negotiations have, in turn, shaped economic policy-making in
areas of mutual concern.
Regarding the first dynamic, the political rapprochement between the MAS
government and the economic elites has followed a dynamic of interaction, in
the course of which both sides started to send signals and mutually responded
to these signals. Reportedly, a crucial role was played by the then president of
the National Association of Oilseed and Wheat Producers, ANAPO, Demetrio
Pérez, who initiated a dialogue with the MAS government in early 2009. While
this move, at that time, was criticized by civic leaders and local authorities in
Santa Cruz, the results of this dialogue increasingly convinced other business
leaders that it was in fact a viable strategy (Página SIETE, 2013). 14 Yet, it was
not only positive experiences with the government that, in the course of 2009,
led to an increasing willingness to engage in dialogue. On the part of the busi-
ness elites in Santa Cruz, the detection of a supposed terrorist cell in Santa
Cruz with close links to the regional elites also played an important role. While
the whole case is still a mystery today, 15 the political consequences were clear-
cut: As key figures of Santa Cruz’s radical autonomy movement fled the coun-
try from the threat of criminal prosecution, those that remained clearly recog-
nized the (potential) costs associated with a continued strategy of confrontation
(Crabtree & Chaplin, 2013, pp. 135-136; Espinoza, 2015, pp. 318-319). 16
As a result of this incident as well as of the increasing willingness on the
part of the business representatives to talk to the government, the close alliance
between business, political and civic leaders (as organized in the Comité Pro
Santa Cruz) that had sustained the oppositional autonomy movement in Santa
Cruz started to show splits (Eaton, 2017, pp. 169-174). In September 2009, for
instance, the Santa Cruz Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CAINCO) de-
cided to invite president Morales to the opening ceremony of the International
Fair of Santa Cruz (ExpoCruz), a decision that was heavily criticized by civic
leaders from Santa Cruz but met with explicit support from the president of the
National Chamber of Industry (CNI), Daniel Sánchez (Los Tiempos, 2009).
Given the controversy in Santa Cruz, Morales eventually refrained from partic-
ipating in the event, but a year later he decided to go and, together with the
118 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

president of CAINCO, reportedly presented the opening ceremony as “a new

phase in the relationship between the private sector and the state, between ori-
ent and occident, between the traditional and the emerging elites” (Correo del
Sur, 2010). These incipient encounters, during which both sides mutually con-
firmed their willingness to shift form confrontation to cooperation, eventually
set in motion a process by which a certain level of trust was built and dialogue
became increasingly routinized. 17
It is important to note that these dialogues were not merely about creating
trust. They also produced tangible policy agreements. This points to the second
dynamic: While the overall nature of the post-neoliberal development model
pursued by the MAS government enabled the rapprochement with the econom-
ic elites, 18 this rapprochement offered the economic elites – again – direct po-
litical influence on economic policy-making. This influence came in the form
of policy proposals and was exercised, inter alia, in the context of the negotia-
tions between the government and business representatives.
A case in point is the shared agenda for the expansion of agribusiness in the
lowlands, which consolidated in the course of 2013 (Wolff, 2016, p. 131). The
joint commitment to the Agenda Patriótica 2015, which the MAS government
and key representatives of the economic elite from Santa Cruz ratified in De-
cember 2013, basically implied a private-public partnership to heavily increase
investment in infrastructure in order to significantly expand agricultural pro-
duction and export (Vicepresidencia, 2013; Ramírez, 2015; Webber, 2017, pp.
341-342). 19 In addition to public investment, key demands on the part of the
private sector included legal security and a secure market access (Ramírez,
2015, p. 1). Concerning the issue of legal security, landowners had called for
extending the time period in which the verification of the economic and social
function of land was to take place from two years (as established by the agrari-
an law) to up to ten years; after years of dialogue, parliament, in 2015, extend-
ed the time period to five years (La Razón, 2015). The demand for secure mar-
ket access is directed against various restrictions on agricultural and agribusi-
ness export goods that the MAS government has introduced since 2008 in or-
der to prevent domestic food prices from rising too much (Ormachea &
Ram’irez, 2013, p. 31). In response to strong protest from private
(agri)business, which included cuts in agricultural production and threats to not
supply the domestic market, “Morales was forced in 2010 to lift both the price
controls and the export restrictions” (Eaton, 2017, pp. 165). Even if the gov-
ernment has continued to use export quotas, it is now regularly negotiating
these policies with the respective producers and associations (see, for instance,
CEPB, 2017). 20 Furthermore, as emphasized above, recent years have also seen
the titling of productive lands in favour of cattle and extensive crop production
(Colque et al., 2016, pp. 10-11).
Beyond the specific area of agribusiness, another example that highlights
the policy effects of the new cooperative relationship concern the new invest-
ment promotion law, which was approved in 2014, following three years of
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 119

negotiations between the MAS government and the private sector (El País,
2014). In institutional terms, in June 2016, president Morales established a
Productive Economic Council (Consejo Económico Productivo) as a new fo-
rum for the dialogue between the government and the private sector (La Razón,
2017). At the same time, however, important policy differences have persisted.
One recurring theme has been the increase in the basic and the minimum sala-
ry, which the MAS government has continued to negotiate with the national
trade union confederation COB only, without allowing business associations to
participate (see, for instance, La Razón, 2018). Both the procedure and the ex-
tent of (minimum) salary increases show that Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism still
significantly diverges from usual neoliberal recipes and is, thus, far from simp-
ly in line with business interests.
In sum, the rapprochement between the government and key business sec-
tors emerged from a dynamic of interaction that was driven by incentives pro-
vided by a specific correlation of power: While the MAS government was po-
litically dominant but had to recognize its economic vulnerability (vis-à-vis the
structural power of business), economically important business elites, whose
traditional political allies proved increasingly weak, realized their political vul-
nerability (vis-à-vis a hegemonic government that was there to stay) (Wolff,
2016). At the same time, in economic terms, both sides saw immediate benefits
in a division of labour in which economic elites would “get out of politics and
just focus on their businesses” (vice-president Álvaro García Linera, quoted by
Eaton, 2017, p. 171), while the government would not interfere with, and even
support, them in this regard. This said, the emerging alliance was of an essen-
tially pragmatic or tactical nature, as opposed to strategic, in the sense of being
based on a delimited set of shared objectives rather than on a broad political
agenda and a common ideology. 21

Success, limitations, and structural fragility of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism

In macroeconomic terms, the rapprochement between the government and key

business sectors has contributed to Bolivia’s relatively successful performance
(Molina, 2018). Given the crucial role that largescale agricultural producers
(mostly from Santa Cruz) play in the production of important export goods
and, even more importantly, of key domestic foodstuffs (Eaton, 2017, pp. 163-
166), prolonged confrontation would have come with significant macroeco-
nomic costs. Yet, without a doubt, accommodation has also systematically re-
duced the MAS’s potential to initiate a structural transformation of the Bolivi-
an economy (Eaton, 2017; Webber, 2016). The political and macroeconomic
success of the government’s post-neoliberal agenda as well as its contradic-
tions and limitations are, therefore, two sides of the same coin. As a conse-
quence, the post-neoliberal equilibrium that sustains both Bolivian politics and
economics is far from consolidated. In the current context, important cracks
120 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

can be observed that reflect an increasingly difficult macroeconomic context,

on the one hand, and a changing correlation of power, on the other.
In the economic area, the post-neoliberal equilibrium, in a nutshell, balanc-
es an emphasis on state-led development and social inclusion policies with a
supportive hands-off approach towards private business in key strategic areas
(such as, most notably, export-oriented agribusiness). Macro economically, this
equilibrium is based on the financial resources generated by the (restructured)
hydrocarbon sector. With the end of the commodities boom, this has become
increasingly unviable, although the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves
has so far enabled the MAS government to maintain the Bolivian economy on
a path of quite robust economic growth (IMF, 2018). Yet, over the last three
years, a fiscal deficit of around 7 per cent of GDP and a significant decrease in
the international reserves clearly show that the fiscal space has been shrinking,
reducing the government’s ability to please contradictory policy demands by
means of generous public spending (Molina, 2018).
Under such increasingly difficult macroeconomic conditions and with pres-
idential elections approaching, a crucial question concerns the nature of the
socio-political alliances on which the MAS government is basing its post-
neoliberal model. In this regard, too, the current context reveals quite important
tensions and weaknesses. As is widely acknowledged, the popular sectors were
the key source of support that enabled the rise of the MAS as well as its suc-
cessful establishment as the hegemonic political power, but since roughly 2010
the relationship between the MAS government and many popular sector organ-
izations and movements have become increasingly strained (Anria, 2019;
Mayorga, 2016). The increasing tensions and in part open conflicts between the
government and important popular sector organizations can be seen as the flip
side of what Maristella Svampa has called “Consenso de los Commodities”.
While this (partial) consensus, which is based on “largescale export of primary
goods, economic growth and the expansion of consumption” (Svampa, 2019, p.
24), included the MAS government, the economic elites and important seg-
ments of the population, its implementation has met with resistance from parts
of the MAS’ erstwhile allies. To an important extent, therefore, the breaking
apart of the original socio-political alliance that brought the MAS to power
results from the structural continuities and strategic priorities outlined above,
most notably the continuing (if not intensified) reliance on resource extraction
as well as the aim to integrate and modernize Bolivia by means of public in-
vestment in big infrastructure projects (Farthing, 2019; Lander, 2013; Svampa,
2019).
At the same time, however, the alliance that scholars have observed with
regard to the relationship between the MAS government and the economic
elites (Ormachea & Ramírez, 2013, p. 66; Webber, 2016, p. 1857) is clearly of
a different nature. As argued above, it is tactical rather than strategic – and the
fragility of this tactical alliance has become obvious as the correlation of power
that sustained it has started to crumble. Since 2016, the MAS government has
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 121

faced increasing domestic resistance, triggered by the contentious issue of

whether president Morales should be allowed to run for another term in the
presidential elections of 2019. The 2009 constitution explicitly prohibits anoth-
er re-election and, in a referendum on 21 February 2016 (21F), a narrow major-
ity of the voters rejected the proposal to change the constitution so as to allow
Morales and García Linera to run again (Mayorga & Rodríguez, 2016). Yet,
the MAS did not accept this verdict of the people and, in November 2017, the
country’s constitutional court decided at request of the ruling party that term
limits for elected offices are per se unconstitutional as they are in breach of the
universal right to political participation as enshrined in the American Conven-
tion on Human Rights (New York Times, 2017). This ruling has been met with
widespread opposition within Bolivia, with civic movements and political op-
position parties mobilizing in defence of the 21F vote, that is, of the 2016 ref-
erendum. As a consequence, the MAS government has been facing significant-
ly reduced domestic support and increasing resistance and, for the first time
since 2005, opinion polls suggest that another electoral victory of Morales is
far from assured and that a united opposition could actually defeat him. In this
context, it is interesting to note that most business representatives have re-
mained relatively cautious in not taking to open of a political stance, while
clearly sympathizing with the (centre-right) opposition to Morales.
Indeed, when looking at the recent waves of protests against Morales’s re-
newed candidacy in the course of 2018, official business voices are relatively
absent. Yet, a general tendency within the business associations to support the
opposition is nevertheless obvious, and an increasing number of organizations
have taken an explicit political position on the question at hand. When, for in-
stance, protests were called for 21 February 2018 to mark the anniversary of
the referendum, the national Confederation of Private Entrepreneurs of Bolivia
(CEPB) refrained from taking an official position, leaving the decision up to
the federations and chambers at the departmental and/or sectoral level. In re-
sponse, several important organizations explicitly joined the call for protest,
including the National Chamber of Commerce (CNC), the National Associa-
tion of Oilseed and Wheat Producers (ANAPO), and the Eastern Chamber of
Agriculture (CAO) (El Diario, 2018; Página SIETE, 2018).
A similar pattern was repeated in December 2018, when mobilization cen-
tred on the highest electoral court which was to authorize (or reject) the candi-
dacy of Morales. While CEPB president Ronald Nostas emphasized the strictly
economic mission of his organization, the Santa Cruz Chamber of Industry and
Commerce (CAINCO), for instance, emitted a communiqué in support of the
strike called by the department’s civic committee (Comité Pro Santa Cruz).
Obviously struggling to not take an official position on this matter, CAINCO’s
communiqué reportedly read that the associates of the chamber “in their great
majority have indicated that they will be complying with” the call (quoted in El
Deber, 2018). What is obvious from these two examples is that the question,
from the perspective of the business associations, is whether to openly embrace
122 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

the opposition or to remain officially neutral. Given the political affinity to the
(centre-right) opposition among business representatives, explicit support to
the MAS government is clearly not an option.

Conclusion

This paper started with the observation that the MAS government in Bolivia is
one of the very few success stories that remain of Latin America’s leftist turn.
This is certainly true when comparing the situation in Bolivia with most other
(previously) leftist-governed countries in the region. In this paper, I have sug-
gested that the political economy of actually existing post-neoliberalism as it
has taken shape in Bolivia under president Morales helps understand this rela-
tive success. More specifically, the paper has focused on the interaction be-
tween two key dimensions of this political economy: the strategic orientation
and key features of economic policy-making and the political relationship be-
tween the government and the economic elites. I have argued that the overall
thrust of neo-developmentalist policies that have been pursued by the MAS
government have allowed for the emergence of a dynamic of interaction that
has produced increasing cooperation between the government and the coun-
try’s economic elites. This very cooperation, in turn, has helped consolidate a
variant of post-neoliberalism that still represents a significant departure from
the pre-MAS era but is simultaneously characterized by important continuities
in both economic structures and strategic priorities of economic policy-making.
Such a reading of Bolivia’s political economy under MAS rule, I submit, cor-
responds better to the complex combination of continuity and change than in-
terpretations that depict the MAS government as having simply given up on its
post-neoliberal agenda.
Analysing the economic foundations and the political alliances sustaining
Bolivia’s version of post-neoliberalism, on the one hand, helps understand why
it has been working so relatively successfully for quite a few years now. Eco-
nomically, cooperation with key (agri)business sectors in Santa Cruz supported
the macroeconomic performance of the MAS government. Politically, it signif-
icantly weakened the oppositional autonomy movement in the Bolivian low-
lands. On the other hand, however, the political economy of post-neoliberalism
also sheds light on its inherent fragility. In macroeconomic terms, the post-
neoliberal equilibrium has relied on excess revenues generated by the hydro-
carbon sector, which has become a weakness in times of low commodities
prices. Politically, the tactical alliance between the MAS government and the
country’s economic elites consisted in pragmatic cooperation based on a spe-
cific correlation of forces: between a politically strong but economically vul-
nerable government and economically strong but politically weak economic
elites. The positioning of Bolivia’s business associations in the context of the
current wave of protests against the re-election of president Morales clearly
suggests that their rapprochement with the MAS government basically reflect-
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 123

ed the lack of political alternatives at the national level. As the government is

losing its uncontested political hegemony and opposition forces re-emerge as
potentially viable options, the economic elites know where to place their bets.

***

Jonas Wolff is executive board member and head of the research department
Intrastate Conflict at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His re-
search focuses on the transformation of political orders, contentious politics,
international democracy promotion, and Latin American politics.
Address: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Baseler Str. 27-31, 60329 Frankfurt,
Germany.
E-mail: [email protected]

Acknowledgements: A previous version of this paper was presented at the Annual Con-
gress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), May 23-26, 2018, in Barcelona,
Spain. The author thanks Thomas Chiasson-LeBel, Barbara Hogenboom, Manuel Larrabure
and two anonymous reviewers for comments and Niklas Markert and Babette Ullemeyer for
research assistance.

Notes
1 Success, here, is understood both in narrowly political terms (exemplified by the mere
fact that the MAS government is still in power after more than 13 years) and in terms of
the relative socioeconomic performance (as compared to other leftist governments in the
region and to the rest of Latin America in general).
2 This focus implies a few important blind spots that delimit the following analysis. Most
importantly, with a view to both economic policy and economic elites, I largely focus on
the domestic level and, thus, ignore the inter- and transnational dimensions of Bolivia’s
political economy. I similarly elide the rest of Bolivian society and, in particular, the po-
litical role of popular sectors organizations in contemporary Bolivia (Wolff, 2018). The
following analysis of the political economy of post-neoliberalism in Bolivia is, there-
fore, a partial one only.
3 In fact, the departmental Federation of Private Entrepreneurs of Bolivia-Santa Cruz
(FEPB-SC) withdrew from the national confederation (CEPB) in 2004 “over fears that
national business leaders had failed to mount a vigorous defence of private property
rights vis-à-vis Evo Morales and the MAS” (Eaton, 2017, p. 150).
4 In line with Ruckert et al. (2017, p. 1584), I follow David Harvey’s definition of neolib-
eralism as “in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes
that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and pre-
serve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.” (Harvey, 2005, p. 2)
124 | ERLACS No. 108 (2019): July-December

5 To be sure, this criterion of “somehow progressive qualities” refers to the overall direc-
tion of post-neoliberal processes of change. It does not imply that each and every policy
measure that signals a turning away from neoliberal recipes will necessarily pursue (let
alone achieve) progressively redistributive aims. For instance, while an increasing focus
on public investment (as opposed to private investment) clearly signals a shift away
from a market-oriented, neoliberal development strategy (and, under democratic condi-
tions, does imply a more egalitarian control of resources and power), public investment
in and of itself does far from always aim at redistributing access to resources in an egali-
tarian direction.
6 These three areas cover important parts but certainly not the entire range of economic
policies that are relevant for the debate on post-neoliberalism in Bolivia and beyond
(Ruckert et al., 2017, pp. 1586-1590). Key policy areas that are missing include, most
notably, social policy and labour policy. In these areas, the MAS government has signif-
icantly increased social spending, introduced new cash transfer programs, extended the
coverage of social security and continuously increased the minimum wage (Gray, 2010,
pp. 66-67; Madrid et al., 2010, pp. 164-165; Loza, 2013, pp. 107-113).
7 In the production sector, Radhuber identifies seven newly established public enterprises
(ranging from sugar and dairy to paper and cement production) but shows that the Em-
presa de Apoyo a la Producción de Alimentos (EMAPA) “receives virtually all financial
resources destined for public enterprises in the production sector” (2014, p. 289). Yet,
even EMAPA only received a minimal share of the overall public spending for state-
owned enterprises, which overwhelmingly (85-90 per cent) went to YPFB (Radhuber,
2014, p. 286, based on data until 2011).
8 My calculation based on data provided by Colque et al. (2016) as also cited in Webber
(2017).
9 In this paper, I refer to “economic” or “business elites” as the group of individuals and
organizations that exercise disproportionate influence on economic decision-making (for
a broader discussion of elites in the region, see Codato & Espinoza, 2018). A key type of
actor that I focus on in this regard is the official business associations, but influential in-
dividual entrepreneurs and owners of major companies and conglomerates are certainly
also part of the economic elite.
10 The most elaborated version of this argument is made by Webber who draws on Antonio
Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution (2016). See also Ormachea & Ramírez (2013)
and Veltmeyer (2012).
11 The new constitution’s Article 56 still makes the right to private property conditional on
the fulfilment of a social function, but the non-fulfilment of this social function was re-
moved from Article 57’s catalogue of reasons that justify expropriation (Börth, 2009, p.
74). Interestingly, all Bolivian constitutions since 1945 had featured the non-fulfilment
of a social function as a reason justifying expropriation. In the case of land ownership,
however, the new constitution does provide for a “reversion” to public ownership in
case that the “economic and social function” is not fulfilled (Article 401).
12 To be sure, business representatives (and neoclassical economists) frequently criticize
public investment as crowding out private investment. Still, arguably, the main issue at
stake here is not so much the source of the funding as the type (private or public) of en-
terprise that implements the (public) investment.
 Jonas Wolff: The political economy of Bolivia’s post-neoliberalism | 125

13 In this sense, the MAS government’s policies correspond to what Manuel Larrabure
(2016) has called a “neostructuralist bargain.”
14 Not by chance, Demetrio Pérez was the first president of ANAPO who did not represent
the Santa Cruz elite circles but who actually came from a rural Quechua family from Po-
tosí (Castañón, 2015, p. 75).
15 In April 2009, the police stormed a hotel room in Santa Cruz in order to uncover a sup-
posed international terrorist cell that – according to the official version – aimed at sup-
porting the separatist movement in Santa Cruz by, inter alia, assassinating Evo Morales.
During the operation, three alleged members of this group were killed and two arrested
(Espinoza, 2015, p. 318).
16 Thanks to Thomas Chiasson-LeBel for pushing me to take the political consequences of
this incident more seriously.
17 See the detailed analysis presented in Wolff (2016, pp. 129-133).
18 The overall course of economic policy – the neo-developmentalist agenda outlined
above – was clearly defined by the MAS government. While it certainly reflected the
structural power of key business sectors, it did not reflect direct political influence on
their part (Wolff, 2016).
19 The most recent example in this regard concerns an agreement from March 2018 be-
tween the MAS government and key agribusiness sectors in Santa Cruz that establishes
a private-public partnership to promote ethanol production (Los Tiempos, 2018).
20 In general, export restrictions have remained targeted and temporary measures and, in
general, they did not prevent Bolivian agribusiness exports from rising (Ormachea &
Ramírez, 2013, pp. 30-39).
21 This distinction loosely draws on Steve Ellner (2019, p. 12), who distinguishes between
“a tactical alliance [of pink-tide governments in Latin America] with business sectors to
achieve limited objectives” and “the strategic alliance based on anti-imperialism advo-
cated by much of the twentieth-century left”. The MAS government’s strategic alliance
with local business elites that the leftist critics identify is, of course, not based on anti-
imperialism but on extractivism and a turning away from redistributive economic poli-
cies (Ormachea & Ramírez, 2013; Svampa, 2019; Webber, 2016).

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