Protest State and street politics: Bolivian social movements in the 2019–2020 crisis

This chapter assess the preponderant role of ‘street politics’ in the Bolivian political scenario, presenting an analysis of the decisive role of Bolivian social movements in terms of ‘protest state’. It discusses the critical nature of the state-social movements relation to our understanding of the underlying developments that lead up to the 2019-2020 crisis, as well as to making sense of baffling events of October/November 2019. Weak political representation in particular and weak and low esteemed political institutions in general, in combination with increased organizational resources, account for the considerable impact of ‘street politics’. Although social movements are not on their own sufficient or all determining, institutional politics are both dependent of and vulnerable to social protest, rendering any political force unable to govern without ‘contentious power’. In that way, the Bolivian political experiment continues to look for effective ways to incorporate social movements in the political process that allow the necessary ‘transits’ or ‘grey zones’, to attain balance between institutionalized and street politics.