| With the introduction of the Ley de Participation Popular (Law of Popular Participation, or LPP) in 1994, as part of a second-generation neoliberal reform package, Bolivia pioneered a widely commended participatory decentralization regime. The legislation, which introduced citizen involvement in municipal governance and recognized grassroots organizations as interlocutors, was intended to increase the legitimacy of the neoliberal model of development by improving representativeness and responsiveness, while undermining traditional clientelist and corporatist forms of representation and incorporation. It also aimed to further diminish the political influence of Bolivia's once-powerful and radical national labour union movement, and its entrenched resistance to market reforms. But protest related to neoliberal adjustment in Bolivia continued. In April 2000, for example, the privatization of the municipal water utility in the city of Cochabamba touched off a massive opposition movement. Based on field research carried out in the months following the water protests, this dissertation analyzes the relationship between decentralization, democratization, and popular mobilization occurring within the context of attempts to consolidate a "mature neoliberal regime" in Bolivia---that is, a regime shaped by the second-generation institutional reform agenda. It shows some of the limitations of, and opportunities created by, democratic decentralization in this context, and demonstrates how oppositional sectors continue to advance alternatives to the neoliberal model by reconfiguring their mobilizational strategies within the changing ideological and institutional environment. The dissertation analyzes the links between second-generation neoliberal reform, including the LPP, and the water protest movement, including novel mobilizational strategies and modes of organization that it produced. It shows that the relationship between decentralization and democratization is shaped by specific and varying political conditions, but that in the context of inequality that prevails in neoliberal Bolivia, the democratizing and counter hegemonic potential of local participatory reform like the LPP is likely to be won through continuing struggle on the part of popular sector groups facing dominant elites at every level, from the local to the global. |
