Political Upheaval in Bolivia

For years, politics in the United States has been dominated by a two-party system. One party is said to represent the conservative point of view; the other, the liberal point of view. In other words, the political party system in the United States divides itself or "cleaves" along a conservative-liberal axis.

How stable is that division or cleavage? Does it reflect the true divisions of the country? Or is it a division that has been forced on the electorate?

Another country that until recently had a stable political party system was Bolivia. There, the main cleavage was between workers and capitalists. But the system in Bolivia suddenly collapsed in 2002. Why?

According to Jean-Paul Faguet, a professor of the political economy of development at the London School of Economics, the system in Bolivia collapsed because the cleavage on which it rested was artificial. The major parties represented either workers or capitalists. But in fact, Bolivia had precious few of either.

The real cleavage in Bolivia, Professor Faguet says, was between a rural population who identified along ethnic lines and an urban population who saw themselves as cosmopolitan. The conflicts were regional and ethnic—not those of economic classes. The true cleavage eventually made itself felt and in the process tore apart the existing political party system.

How was the actual cleavage formed in the first place? Professor Faguet points to the legacy of 300 years of Spanish colonization. That, he writes, "was a significantly more powerful and sustained experience that changed society in far deeper ways than Bolivia's modest industrialization."

Professor Faguet's article appears in the June 2019 issue of Politics & Society.