Draft intro to Chapter 3

Much of Bolivian historiography characterizes the 1952 National Revolution and the 1952-1964 MNR regime that followed as a period of nation-building [refnote]. Historical studies of the 1952 Revolution, however, also focus on early twentieth century Bolivian political history and the revolution's origins. The revolutionary process itself, though relatively quick (the entire ancien régime was toppled in three days), was a product of two decades of evolving revolutionary-nationalist discourse. Following the 1932-1935 Chaco War, a new Bolivian "political class" [refnote] emerged, intent on reshaping Bolivian society. The 1952 Revolution was, essentially, the culmination of a project meant to deliberately create a new "imagined community" based on principles of mestizo nationalism.

This chapter aims to tie three literatures together to explain the background conditions of Bolivia's two-decades-long democratic experience, and the recent crisis. First, the historical institutionalism literature, which points out the importance of past historical experience and institutions for later political development. Bolivia's democracy did not emerge from a blank slate; it was substantially shaped by previous historical experience. Second, the nationalism literature, especially Benedict Anderson's conception of nations as "imagined communities" points to the constructed nature of Bolivian civil society. There is a significant body of historiography that points to the 1952 Revolution as a deliberate nation-building project. Clearly, the nationalist identity that emerged from that experience had a profound influence on the development of Bolivian civil society and the kind of institutional structures available for a later democratic transformation.

Third, Bolivia's "national question" is an important one for the future of its democracy. It is also a much-ignored element of modern democratic theory. Democracy is more than just a method of governing, it is also a means of governing a people. That is, before any community can successfully govern itself democratically it must first agree that it is indeed a demos, a political community (and not two or more such communities). If nations are "imagined communities", there is no reason to believe that new such communities cannot be so constructed in the future. Likewise, the framework of democracy as a type of imagined community [refnote] is worth exploring. If only because democracies, unlike other types of political communities, seem much more open (and vulnerable) to constant deconstruction of their "national question".

All three issues are important for contemporary Bolivia, which today faces questions not just of its continued democracy, but of its continued existence as a nation-state. As the following chapter illustrates, twentieth century Bolivian nationalism not only played a key role in producing state legitimacy, it was a deliberately constructed discourse that benefitted some and excluded others. The shift after democratization from a statist-nationalist discourse to a liberal-pluralist one reopened Bolivia's "national question". The political crisis facing Bolivia today is as much a question of what kind of national political community it is, as any other issue.

The following chapter outlines twentieth century Bolivian political history, with an emphasis on the above issues. Its emphasis, however, is on the evolution of the national discourse that became consolidated by the 1952 Revolution. The processes of nation-building and state-building went hand in hand, as the revolutionary-nationalist conception of the Bolivian nation implied certain institutional state structures (principally, the desarrolista state). The historical institutional evolution of the Bolivian nation-state included mechanisms (such as those described by Benedict Anderson) for promoting a common political community, a common demos. Subsequent chapters will focus on two things. First, how democratization weakened the institutional framework for reproducing this common imagined community in the post-democratization generation. Second, how changes in institutional design fostered centrifugal, rather than centripetal political forces. This breakdown of the revolutionary-nationalist state allowed for a growth in competing political identities that questioned not only the institutional state, but the vision of a national community.