Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Bolivia has attracted the attention of an increasing number of social scientists. The century commenced with massive social protests against the privatization and commodification of water in the central city of Cochabamba. Three years later, social mobilization and unrest in the city of El Alto (next to La Paz) and throughout the country against hydrocarbon policies led to the ousting of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada and the crystallization of the so-called October plan or agenda.
The October 2003 agenda included “1) nationalization of hydrocarbons and natural resources, 2) a new Constituent Assembly to re-found the country, and 3) trials against the deposed authorities, for damages to the country and to Bolivian society” (Vega Camacho Reference Vega Camacho2012). This was the political agenda of the social and indigenous movements that fueled both the water and gas wars. It was also, and to a large extent, the borrowed agenda of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party (Vega Camacho Reference Vega Camacho2012), which grew out of a cocalero social base (growers who were former miners) and rose electorally at the local level initially, until reaching the national presidency in 2006.
After the social protests, it was the MAS experience in government that enchanted scholars—including this reviewer—and leftist activists alike. Since 2006, the MAS government has presided over a wide array of social and political changes, such as the election of the first indigenous president, the refounding of Bolivia as a Plurinational State, and the inclusion of indigenous demands and rights in the 2009 Constitution, such as indigenous territorial autonomies and prior consultation. Fast-forward to 2019 and the October elections, and as Evo Morales campaigns for a fourth consecutive presidential term, despite a constitutional two-term limit and a national referendum that should have prevented him from running, a number of alarm bells go off about the future of Bolivia’s democracy and the MAS trajectory in power.
In this context, Santiago Anria’s book is an excellent and very welcome in-depth analysis of how the MAS has (at least initially) escaped the Michelsian iron law of oligarchization of partisan elites. The MAS is a case of what Anria calls a movement-based party; that is, a party that is directly founded by and later keeps strong ties with grassroots social movements (2, 9). The book’s main question is “why some movement-based parties develop more top-down structures designed to enhance the power and autonomy of the party leadership while others remain more open to bottom-up participation and responsive to the interests, demands, and preferences of their social bases” (2).
Anria’s main argument is that the historical conditions leading to the creation of the movement-based parties (such as key characteristics of their origins and early development, their road to national power, and the conditions surrounding their access to power), jointly with the strength, density, and autonomy of the social movements that constitute the social base of the party, account for the degree of party elite power concentration. To test the generalizability of his argument, Anria extends his study and compares the MAS with the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil and the Broad Front (FA) in Uruguay. I would argue nevertheless that the main strength and contribution of the book reside in its in-depth study of the internal politics of the MAS.
To my knowledge, Anria’s book is the most engaged and thorough analysis of the internal politics of the MAS there is at present (certainly in English, but possibly also in Spanish). The book is based on extensive fieldwork and more than 170 in-depth interviews carried out in 4 departments of Bolivia (La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz), plus detailed analysis of internal candidate selection in 5 municipalities (La Paz, El Alto, Achacachi, Villa Tunari, Santa Cruz). Some of the excerpts from the interviews are delightful—true jewels that the reader discovers throughout the book.
When Movements Become Parties starts with a theory chapter that nicely sets up the research problem and main argument, followed by chapters on the ascendance of the MAS to power, two excellent empirical chapters that demonstrate the influence of social movements’ bases on policymaking and candidate selection, a comparative chapter, and conclusions. Chapter 3, on the internal process of candidate selection to the legislature (uninominal and plurinominal seats) and to mayoral positions, shows the tensions between party leadership and social movements and theorizes the conditions that favor social movement choices over those of the national party leadership. Chapter 4, on policymaking analyzes the input of social movements on legislators and national ministries, on issues as diverse as health workers’ conditions, oil prices to consumers, and the construction of the highway that was planned to cut across the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). This chapter reveals that the MAS social movements have had direct access to lawmakers and to national ministry officials.
Chapter 5 compares the trajectories of ascendance to power and the relations between national leadership and social movement bases of the MAS, the PT (which did not escape the Michelsian bad omen), and the FA (where, as in the case of MAS, the degree of power concentration in the elites remained relatively low). The final chapter concludes with broader comparisons and points toward future questions and research. The book is an important and very solid contribution to the literatures on political parties and on Bolivian politics, and I can only raise one relatively minor criticism and some questions in light of current politics in Bolivia.
First, in analyzing the influence of the social movements on the movement-based party elites, the book presents an asymmetry in the rubric used to analyze the MAS and the other two cases, which is most notable in the case of the PT. In the empirical analysis of social movement influence on policymaking in Bolivia, the narrative loses sight of the boundary between party and state. For instance, social movements apply pressure and exercise influence through national ministries; that is, through the state, not movement-based party institutions. The empirics are presented as if the MAS party and the Bolivian national state executive were one and the same. Empirically, one could argue that this was the case; analytically, however, this is not the rubric used to analyze the other two cases.
In the case of the PT, the focus for studying venues of social movement influence is exclusively placed on the party. The analysis does not take into account other ways the social movement bases may have influenced national policies in Brazil. (I thank Giovani Rocha for his related comment.) Take, for example, the wide and dense network of participatory institutions that existed at the local level during the PT’s tenure. Those state-sponsored institutions were vehicles of civil society (and, one could argue extensively, of the PT social movement bases’) input into national policymaking. Such influence existed in many policy areas, but it was particularly effective in health care (Pogrebinschi and Samuels Reference Pogrebinschi and Samuels2014).
Second, one of the main two threads of the book’s argument is that the autonomy of the social movements explains the degree of concentration of power in the partisan elite. However, this raises the question of how to take into account whether the whole system is becoming increasingly less competitive, or whether the party in power is dividing and conquering the social movements and only working with some factions of them. In other words, how can we be attentive to the magnitude (rather than solely autonomy or density) of the social movement base? What happens if, over time, that social movement base erodes, and parts of it abandon the movement-based party? Or to put it in a slightly cynical way, how important is ruling party leadership responsiveness to some elements of its social base if the basic scaffolding of electoral democracy, such as independence of the judiciary, independence of the national electoral tribunal, respect for electoral results (such as those of a national referendum) is crumbling down? Will the MAS’s transformative political, social, and cultural experience continue to enchant us past the presidential elections of October 20, 2019? Could Anria’s book also be read as a warning call about what would have to remain in place for the MAS to continue to allow for social movement participation—assuming it is not too late?
In conclusion, When Movements Become Parties is a wonderful and timely contribution to the literatures on political parties in general and to movement-based parties in particular. Because the book’s prose and analyses are highly accessible, it can be assigned in graduate and undergraduate courses on Latin American or comparative politics. Furthermore, every scholar and policymaker interested in Bolivia (and its political future) should read it to familiarize themselves with the political fabric of the MAS.
