ABSTRACT This article critically examines the project of transformative constitutionalism implemented by the Movement for Socialism (MAS) government which aims to decolonize Bolivian society through constructing a ‘plurinational’ state. Based on ethnography of the political institutions of a rural indigenous community and their interaction with this new state, it argues that programs of constitutional reform are limited in their capacity to address colonial legacies. This is due to the incompatibility of the polyvalent character of postcolonial indigenous societies with the disposition of states and legal systems to bureaucratically re-order and simplify social life, even when ostensibly providing rights and recognitions to marginalized groups.

How social protection programmes affect work choices is a question that has been at the centre of labour economics research for decades. More recently, a scant literature has focused on the effects of social protection on work choices and informal employment in the context of low and middle-income countries. This paper contributes to this scant literature by examining the effect of Bolivia’s Renta Dignidad, a universal non-contributory old age pension that covers all Bolivians aged 60 years and older. We exploit the discontinuity introduced by the age eligibility criteria of the programme and the timing of the announcement of the programme, to implement a difference-in-differences approach. Overall, we find that Renta Dignidad has no detrimental effects on labour force participation and the intensity of labor of adult members of beneficiary households. Instead, we find that the pension reduces the intensity of work for girls aged 12–18 living with a pensioner, which indicates a positive effect on intra-household time allocation. In terms of work choices, Renta Dignidad reduces the probability of holding a salaried job in rural areas by about 8 percentage points, which denotes a shift from formal to informal employment.

ABSTRACT In development studies, law is typically seen as a passive and neutral instrument through which development policy is effected. Using mid-1990s market-led agrarian reform in Bolivia as an example, this article reveals how certain logics internal to law have characterised an approach to development policy that reframes social concerns and political subjectivities and interaction in a way that advances neoliberal economic restructuring while curtailing opposition. This included the emergence of a depoliticised, dehistoricised, technocratised approach to agrarian reform that reconstituted peasants and Indigenous peoples as market actors formally equal to landowners, while limiting their opportunities for dissent and resistance.

Abstract This article examines the circulation of a national health reform policy in Bolivia. While much of what exists as policy finds its dissemination and implementation in literary and material forms such as documents, pamphlets, and legal papers, I suggest that both documented and performative forms of policy provide openings to aesthetic realization that exceed the staid and stable manifestations of finished forms. I examine the presentations and performances of a national health reform policy, which repeated in different iterations and were represented through a variety of aesthetic strategies throughout the country, such as through slide presentations, vocalization, and images. I suggest that the circulation of policy demands an attention not only to specific forms of dissemination but also to the governance strategies and histories that dictate the aesthetic practices and possibilities through which these media come into life, interpellate audiences, and make possible interactive engagements with its content and implementation. This work can help researchers think critically about policy more generally and raise questions about how to study health policy circulation ethnographically.

El presente trabajo aborda una cuestión central del Derecho Civil, como es el incumplimiento de la obligación, que ciertamente es un hecho conflictivo que afecta la convivencia social. Específicamente considerando que, en virtud del artículo 339 del Código Civil boliviano,el deudor no es responsable del incumplimiento si prueba la “imposibilidad de ejecutar la prestación por una causa que no le es imputable”. El objetivo es precisar el significado y presupuestos de aplicación de esta expresión genérica que engloba numerosos hechosy no cuenta con una noción legislativa. Para lograr este propósito, se utiliza doctrina italiana actual y precedentes judiciales allí citados, en razón de que nuestro artículo 339, prácticamente, tiene igual redacción que el artículo 1218 del Código Civil italiano de 1942, fuente principal del Código Civil boliviano vigente desde el 2 de abril de 1976. De esta manera, se aporta al estudio del Derecho Civil nacional y se evidencia la utilidad del Derecho Comparado y la excelencia del Código fuente; haciéndonos reflexionar sobre la suma cautela que se debe tener frente a la necesaria reforma civil en Bolivia para evitar retrocesos en la materia.

Abstract This paper addresses the disjuncture between women's formal land rights and their attaining these in practice, examining the four agrarian reforms carried out by progressive governments after 2000 in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela. It finds that while all four strengthened women's formal land rights, only the reforms in Bolivia and Brazil resulted in a significant share and number of female beneficiaries. In both countries, strong national‐level rural women's movements were the main advocates behind women's land rights in a context in which they formed part of the coalition that brought these regimes to power. In Bolivia, women have benefited principally through joint titling of land to couples in the country's massive land regularization programme. Brazil's reform has been the most redistributionary, and women have benefited through the priority given to female household heads as well as the mandatory joint allocation of land to couples in the agrarian reform settlements.

Abstract This paper argues that, despite claims to the contrary, there has not been extensive, egalitarian reform in Bolivia since Evo Morales assumed the presidency in 2006. In order to explain agrarian processes in the country during the decade under Morales thus far (2006–2016), it examines the changing balance of agrarian class forces in Bolivian society and associated changes in the class composition of the ruling bloc between 2006 and 2010. It divides contestation over agrarian reform processes during this decade into two periods—one of insurgent contestation (2006–2009), and one of agro‐capital–state alliance (2010–2016). The transformations in class alliances over these periods can be understood theoretically through Gramsci's concept of transformismo (transformism). In particular, this concept captures both the way in which leading layers of indigenous–peasant movements have been absorbed into the apparatuses of the state and thus decapitated, and the dialectic of transformation/restoration that characterizes Bolivia's ongoing “process of change”.

BackgroundPrimary health care (PHC)-based reforms have had different results in Latin America. Little attention has been paid to the enablers of collective action capacities required to produce a comprehensive PHC approach.ObjectiveTo analyse the enablers of collective action capacities to transform health systems towards a comprehensive PHC approach in Latin American PHC-based reforms.MethodsWe conducted a longitudinal, retrospective case study of three municipal PHC-based reforms in Bolivia and Argentina. We used multiple data sources and methodologies: document review; interviews with policymakers, managers and practitioners; and household and services surveys. We used temporal bracketing to analyse how the dynamic of interaction between the institutional reform process and the collective action characteristics enabled or hindered the enablers of collective action capacities required to produce the envisioned changes.ResultsThe institutional structuring dynamics and collective action capacities were different in each case. In Cochabamba, there was an ‘interrupted’ structuring process that achieved the establishment of a primary level with a selective PHC approach. In Vicente López, there was a ‘path-dependency’ structuring process that permitted the consolidation of a ‘primary care’ approach, but with limited influence in hospitals. In Rosario, there was a ‘dialectic’ structuring process that favoured the development of the capacities needed to consolidate a comprehensive PHC approach that permeates the entire system.ConclusionThe institutional change processes achieved the development of a primary health care level with different degrees of consolidation and system-wide influence given how the characteristics of each collective action enabled or hindered the ‘structuring’ processes.

2006년 대통령에 취임한 모랄레스 정부는 탈식민적 국가개혁을 언급했고, 핵심적인 요소로서 다국민국가, 상호문화성, 수마 카마냐 등을 언급했다. 이에 본 연구의 목적은 볼리비아에서 왜 탈식민적 국가개혁이 등장하게 되었는지? 어떠한 과정을 거쳐서 탈식민적 국가개혁이 등장하게 되었는지? 탈식민적 국가개혁의 내용은 무엇인지? 등에 대해 연구하는 것이다. Taking office as President of Bolivia in 2006, Evo Morales mentioned decolonial state reform in Bolivia and plurinational state, interculturalism, and Suma Qamana as an essential element. So the purpose of this research is why did decolonial state reform emerge in Bolivia? how did decolonial state reform emerge in Bolivia? what was a contents of decolonial state reform in Bolivia.

This article explores processes of identity-building and claims-making by rural social groups in the context of recent multicultural and plurinational reforms in Bolivia, focusing on an analysis of the narrative apparatus that underpins a paradigmatic land conflict between an indigenous organization and a peasant union in the Bolivian Amazon. The institutional shift that characterized the country after Evo Morales’ election has been reflected and absorbed at the local level. Here, however, the new claims for recognition cannot be understood only through the –often abused – lenses of ‘resistance struggle’, ‘cultural oppression’ and ‘political discrimination of minorities’. In fact, these claims are the result of a complex interaction between institutional changes, and social actors’ ability to respond to them, proposing powerful narratives that provide society and individuals with new shared meanings and mechanisms of self-identification.

Civil Society from the Inside Out Community, Organization and the Challenge of Political Influence

Limits to Reform in Bolivia

From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales – By Jeffery R. Webber

The present study analyzes the results of the implemented reforms in Bolivia since its return to democracy, focusing on the attraction of FDI. This is supported by an extensive review of the literature and existing developments in the field and with a descriptive analysis of the last four decades of economic history and main reforms in the country, proposing a model of evaluation of generated effects due to an optimal rate of investment. In this line, it can be concluded that in both the quantitative and the qualitative perspective the results have been insufficient and unsustainable over time. Another important issue is the fact that this paper open lines for future research work comparing countries with similarities and extrapolations for implemented reforms, results and times of response.

Webber, Jeffrey. 2011. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN: 978–1–60846–106–6. Paperback: 21.50 CAD. Pages: 281.

Warner, Tom. 2010. Losing Control: Canada’s Social Conservatives in the Age of Rights. Toronto: Between the Lines. Reviewed by Lorna Erwin. Kinsman, Gary and Patrizia Gentile. 2010. The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. Vancouver: UBC Press. Reviewed by Mathieu Brûlé. Thompson, Jon. 2011. No Debate: The Israel Lobby and Free Speech at Canadian Universities. Toronto: Lorimer. Reviewed by Alan Sears. Pawley, Howard. 2011. Keep True: A Life In Politics. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Reviewed by Errol Black. Stewart, Roderick and Sharon Stewart. 2011. Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed by Ken Collier. Lilley, Sasha. 2011. Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult. Reviewed by Thom Workman. McNally, David. 2011. Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance. Oakland: PM Press. Reviewed by Bill Burgess. McBride, Stephen and Heather Whiteside. 2011. Private Affluence, Public Austerity: Economic Crisis and Democratic Malaise in Canada. Halifax: Fernwood. Reviewed by Joan McFarland. Harvey, David. 2010. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Reviewed by Matthew Brett. Olsen, Gregg M. 2011. Power and Inequality: A Comparative Introduction. Don Mills: Oxford University Press. Reviewed by Larry Patriquin. Livingstone, David; Dorothy Smith and Warren Smith. 2011. Manufacturing Meltdown: Reshaping Steel Work. Halifax: Fernwood. Reviewed by Ann Duffy. Camfield, David. 2011. Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement. Halifax: Fernwood. Reviewed by Stephanie Ross. Webber, Jeffrey. 2011. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Reviewed by Manuel Larrabure. Post, Charles. 2011. The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620-1877. Leiden: Brill. Reviewed by Jordy Cummings. Bannerji, Himani. 2011. Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Reviewed by Aziz Choudry. Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso. Reviewed by Jeff Noonan.

Jeffery R. Webber, From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2011), pp. x+ 281, $19.00, pb.

This article concerns the impact of educational reforms on young people in Bolivian society as they transition into adulthood, against the backdrop of globalisation and far-reaching structural changes. Ethnicity and cultural capital are linked in complex ways with social stratification in Bolivia. In a pluricultural society, the language of instruction and curricular content are among the most fundamental conditions that determine which social or linguistic groups will be excluded or disadvantaged during formal education. Language and content are particularly significant in identity formation and in the shaping of cultural capital. Each contributes to the formation of specific intercultural skills and opportunities for communication within national or international communities. Additionally, each of these components helps determine which educational paths are open for young people, and which activities they can engage with later in life. In Bolivia, various education reforms have attempted to reshape these parameters. Intercultural Bilingual Education and other key aspects of the reforms will be described along with the historical context in which they emerged. Some conclusions are put forward related to their implementation.

The recent surge in the efforts to reform forest governance—both through decentralisation and tenure reforms—has been coupled by an increase in empirical studies that assess the virtues and limitations of the new regimes. Despite an increasing body of literature, however, there is still limited knowledge about the effects of these reforms on the indigenous groups and their forest governance institutions. This study seeks to contribute to the empirical literature by analysing how policy reforms in Bolivia have affected one indigenous territory, its inhabitants, their de facto property rights regime, and their consequent efforts to govern their forest resources. The case study, about forest use decisions and actions among the Yuracare people in the Bolivian lowlands, is an example of what the Amerindian indigenous societies face in terms of both opportunities and limitations associated with the implementation of formalised de jure rights over forests. We pay particular attention to the effects of the 1996 forestry reforms on the institutional conditions for governing common-pool forests resources. The study draws on primary fi eld data that were collected both before and after the implementation of the reforms. We fi nd that the introduction of formal rights has led to increased security in tenure rights and the emergence of more opportunities for diversifying the sources of income for the Yuracare people. But there are also signifi cant costs associated with the achievement of these benefi ts. The reforms induced the Yuracare people to integrate with the surrounding public and private economies, but we fi nd that these interactions have strained traditional governance arrangements.

The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia - By Benjamin T Dangl; From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales - By Jeffrey R Webber