Book Review: Impasse in Bolivia

Readers:

Again we bring you a review of a recent English publication on Bolivia, an important academic offering, Impasse in Bolivia by Ben Kohl and Linda Farthing. The Democracy Center’s assistant director, Melissa Draper, writes a review. More information on the book can be found here.

Jim Shultz

Book Review: Impasse in Bolivia
by Ben Kohl and Linda Farthing

Impasse in Bolivia is a thoughtful and thorough analysis of Bolivia’s struggle over the past two decades with neoliberal policies. This new book by Ben Kohl and Linda Farthing fills a critical gap in literature on Bolivia, providing an astute analysis of the forces that have dictated the course of Bolivia’s recent history. These are the forces that have sparked a backlash led by the Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, one which has put the nation into international headlines and thrust its first indigenous President into power.

Impasse offers an impressive review of the history, theories and policies that have created the unique national identity for this sparsely populated Andean country. In the first two chapters, the authors lay out the basics of neoliberal theory and the historical backdrop of the country that leads up to the implementation of neoliberal policies. Kohl and Farthing examine the origins of neoliberal theory, from the academics who sketched out its premises to the politicians and institutions that turned those ideas into policies for developing nations like Bolivia. A legible historical outline beginning in the sixteenth century helps readers grasp the ensuing implications of these policies on contemporary Bolivian history.

In Bolivia, these theories became law with the introduction of the New Economic Program (NEP) in 1985. The NEP prepared the way for the neoliberal policies reaffirmed by Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada’s Plan de Todos (1993), which fundamentally changed the concept of citizenship in support of a capitalist economy. Impasse carefully weaves together the political, economic and social tensions produced by these reforms.

Further discussions of policies, such as the political decentralization initiated by the famous Law of Popular Participation, are grounded in important comparative cases ranging from Nepal to Africa. Kohl and Farthing also display a solid understanding of what these policies meant for Bolivians and point out the faults in their implementation.

The penultimate chapter places the strength and efficacy of social movements’ resistance to neoliberal policies in the context of foreign policy and the national dynamics that fed repeated backlashes between 2000 and 2003. We find out why coca growers gained enormous power and how their support of newly formed water coordination committees paved the way for the now famous war over water privatization in Cochabamba in 2000. We see how successive protests on land distribution and tax reform between 2001 and 2003 shifted the crux of national politics to El Alto, elevating newly formed community-based organizations like FEJUVE (Federación de Juntas Vecinales) that would lead the most recent battle against neoliberalism, the Gas War of October 2003.

This all builds the foundation of a comprehensive study of the failure of a much-espoused economic model that did little to satisfy the needs of a diverse and impoverished country. It becomes starkly clear how public resistance to neoliberalism gained strength and why it continues on Bolivia’s streets today.

The book’s conclusions, repeated several times throughout the book, focus on three strands that dominate Bolivian history: international domination and lack of sovereignty; indigenous resistance; and regional pressures. The continually changing role of the state is key to all those factors. Neoliberal policies, in theory, help shrink government presence so that market forces can dominate and growth can be maximized. As the Bolivia case shows, however, the demobilization of the government rendered it useless in its new regulatory role, usurping any power it might have had to act in the people’s interest. And with the shift of power from the state (public) to the market (private), so went the corruption, unchecked by any legitimate supervising authority.

Impasse’s only weakness is that the recommendations the reader so eagerly awaits in its final conclusions are not as clearly developed as the book’s historical analysis. As one searches for how Bolivia could possibly harness its lively democracy for the advancement of the country as a whole, the only thing to grab onto is repeated in the last paragraph. What Bolivia needs to present a viable alternative to its neoliberal past, according to the authors, is “a strong global civil society capable of re-embedding the economy into social life.” The reader is left wanting more.

Impasse makes a real contribution to the English literature available on Bolivia. At a time when the country is once again in the international limelight, we can thank Kohl and Farthing for sorting out the intricate threads of political culture, identity and resistance that make up Bolivia's national fabric and determine its role in the global community. Policy-makers, journalists, academics and students of Latin American politics alike will benefit from the window this book offers into the complexities of a country that has taught the world about the dangers of foreign prescriptions and highlighted the chasm between Western theoretical solutions and the Andean reality.

Reviewed by Melissa Draper