States of discontent: Patronage, liberalism, and indigenist democracy in Central Bolivia

The recent success of "new left" parties in countries long marked by stark inequalities, such as Bolivia, raises important questions for our understanding of political change: how do citizens experience change heralded nationally and internationally as a "transition" from both free-market economics and neo-colonialism? How do they re-think their identities in relation to the election of self-identified indigenous leaders?;States of Discontent addresses these questions by building a bridge over what Angelique Haugerud has termed the "no man's land" between anthropology, with its focus on the everyday, and political science, with its emphasis on institutions. This dissertation examines the interplay of state reform, subjectivity, and political mobilization in Bolivia. It argues that political change is characterized by the layering of political frameworks, rather than by sudden shifts in political practice. It demonstrates the need to bring together the analysis of individual experience, emotions, and identity politics.;Based on thirty-five months of ethnographic fieldwork in the largely-urban central Bolivian municipality of Sacaba, the dissertation tracks how Sacabans confronted competing political models in circulation in Bolivia. Liberal decentralization reformers promised an end to political conflict by establishing liberal democracy and good governance if citizens focused their energies on making use of limited state entitlements within municipalities. By contrast, Evo Morales, the leftist indigenous leader who won the Presidency in 2005 called upon citizens to be political agents in bringing about a "post-neoliberal" era and challenging racialized inequality.;While standard accounts on both the left and the right posit a modernist trajectory of political change characterized by the disjuncture between historical eras and between political regimes, I demonstrate that the political models declared by leaders to be in conflict---such as patronage, liberalism, and radical democracy---are in practice layered in citizens' expectations of the state. This dissertation contributes to theories of development and party politics by showing the surprisingly thin line between governmental interventions intended to be anti-political (such as decentralization) and radical, explicitly "political" movements intended to effect the redistribution of wealth and power.