Raul Prada: Bolivia’s New Political Constitution of the State

[subsuelo]

Analysis of the New Political Constitution of the State

Raúl Prada Alcoreza

Abstract

In this article, the author analyses the characteristics of the new political constitution of the state, passed after Evo Morales took office as the president of Bolivia. This new con-stitution redefines the concept of the state as well as that of citizenship from a plurinational, multicultural and communitarian perspective. The development of liberal rights, obligations and guarantees is combined with grassroots indigenous claims, which are thereby included in the new legal and institutional framework. Hence, the notion of an interventionist, welfare state that protects natural resources takes shape, which incorporates the ways and practices of first peoples and nations into its institutional life. The state thus becomes a tool for equitable, sovereign and sustainable development.

Raúl Prada Alcoreza - Professor and Researcher. Coordinator of Doctorate Studies on Epistemology at the Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno. Member of the Research Group La Comuna.

...

The characterisation of the Bolivian state as a social unitary state of plurinational and communitarian law is new; this broad and complex description is not found in the old constitution. The characterisation of the state is a thorny subject. It articulates the legal sphere with political urgencies, and the social unitary rule of law with its plurinational, community and intercultural nature, ratifying its condition as free, independent, sovereign and democratic. It is founded on plurality and pluralism that operate in distinct spheres: political, economic, legal, cultural and linguistic. It is based on the recognition of the pre-existence of the originary indigenous peoples and nations, which implies the recognition of their right to self-determination. The characterisation of the state offers a description of the Bolivian people in its diversity and multiplicity, identifying its multicoloured composition with respect to nations, classes(1) and social strata, scattered around the cities and the countryside. The characterisation of the state describes a democratic and participatory government, and opens up multiple types of direct, universal and communitarian representation. It also combines the cultural values of originary peoples and nations with liberal principles. This composite understanding of the characterisation of the state includes liberal constitutional developments and is enriched by the indigenous contributions of new constitutional and political forms.

A constitution for the transition

One might say that the new political constitution of the state is a constitution in transition. It is the passage from a social and unitary state to a plurinational one; from a state that gave up on federalism after the war at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th (called the Federal War) and chose unitarianism. A state that, after the Chaco War, built a populist state, consolidating it as a Latin American-style welfare state during the twelve years of the National Revolution (1952-1964). The unitary and social nature of the state, then, is a legacy of the past. This is how Bolivia approached modernity. What is new in the new constitution is its plurinational and communitarian nature, its administrative decentralisation and its system of autonomies. Its plurinational nature is related to a decolonising dimension that points to the deconstruction of the republican, colonial and liberal state. It is related to the recognition of the existence of originary, indigenous nations prior to colonisation; that is, the recognition of the demographic matrix of the Bolivian people. Bolivian people are noteworthy for their ethnographic and sociological diversity. State pluralism, which is also a pluralism of nations, is a substantial improvement in democratic pluralism, constructed on the basis of collective identities and political communitarianism. The communitarian nature of the new constitution is based on the recognition of the cultural institutions that give form to the behaviours not only of rural communities, but also urban ones. We speak about the ayllus, the tentas, the capitanias, the organising structures that give meaning to migration, migrant settlements, holidays, festivals, challas, rituals and ceremonies, where collective symbolism lies. An initial conclusion could be the following: the new constitution represents a transition from the unitary and social nature of the state to a plural-national and communitarian one.

It is also a constitutional transition, as developments in liberal rights, obligations and guarantees are combined with constitutionalised indigenous demands, and with legal and political forms that give a constitutional framework to the process of nationalisation and recovery of natural resources. In other words, it does not cease to be a liberal constitution, albeit in a pluralist version, incorporating four generations of rights: individual rights, social rights, collective rights and environmental rights. It is also an indigenous and popular constitution in that it incorporates the indigenous nations’ and peoples’ own institutionality, their own structures and practices. In the same way, it is a constitution that recognises the fundamental role of the public realm as an interventionist, welfare and industrialising state.

http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2009/07/raul-prada-bolivias-new-political.html">Bolivia Rising - read more (fairly lengthy read)