A Time for Change - A Case Study of the Bolivian Democracy

Abstract: Bolivia is a country with a troubling political past, and crammed with political instability and turmoil the Bolivian society inhabits a wide spectrum of cleavages. In this paper we determine that Bolivia is a case of unstable democracy. We use consociational theory and consensus democracy theory to answer why this is the case, by looking at the development Bolivia’s institutional design in order to see how this has affected the development and process of democracy and what the consequences have been on the democracy in Bolivia. Our results have shown that Bolivia is a pluralistic and fragmented society that has democratically suffered from its previous institutional design using polices that have not been in the best interest of the country. We also conclude that Bolivia with the new indigenous president Evo Morales is in the middle of a process of institutional change, towards the inclusion of the different groups represented in the society.