State Power and Political‐Power Balance in B olivia: An Analysis through Laws and Finances

L atin A merican movements have been on the forefront of proposing alternatives to neoliberalism throughout the past decades. B olivia and Ecuador stand out, because both countries have passed constitutional reforms that established plurinational states. In B olivia, the historically marginalized indigenous and peasant populations have demanded nothing less than a refoundation of the country. Beginning in the 1990s and intensifying since 2000, they have set a new political agenda for that purpose, focusing fundamentally on resource appropriation and the plurinational state project, but the extent of politico–economic transformations is not clear. Some highlight them as part of the only important counter‐hegemonic processes at the state level, and others stress the existence of “path‐dependencies,” point to the continuities between the politics of the Movement for Socialism and that of its neoliberal predecessors, or even classify these as autocratic attempts at power grabbing. In this article, I choose a new approach. Based on a strategic–relational understanding of the state, I will examine state power by two means of the state, law and money. First, I analyze negotiations over the constitutional process, and then I examine budgetary politics from 2001 to 2011. This period includes the height of social mobilizations, and it was during this time that the state transformation project began. I use this approach to argue that renewed state power, and specifically a new political power correlation, became visible during the constitutional process and subsequently through state finances. This material analysis will reveal the new political power correlation and emerging state power, and also provide more clarity about ongoing political and economic transformations.