The Political Instrument of Self-Employed Workers. Inter-Organizational Conflicts within the Bolivian Process of Change

Abstract

The article analyses the relationship between the MAS-IPSP’s party organization, the main Bolivian social movements, the economic model and the State-society relations during the masista-era. The research relies on over thirty interviews to social and political actors, and on secondary literature. The research recuperates classic analytical tools to explore the different levels of influence reached by the main social organizations surrounding (or composing) the MAS-IPSP and to highlight the role of two relevant conflictual dimensions within the former masista-coalition (salaried versus self-employed workers, indigenism versus developmentalism, among others) which in the middle term jeopardised the hegemony of the MAS-IPSP in Bolivia.