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Race has played a central role in state-building in Latin America. This chapter foregrounds the role of transnational racialization politics in bureaucratic development in the region in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing the transformation of the Bolivian diplomatic bureaucracy following the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), I argue that the circulation in Europe and the Americas of racial discourses on Bolivia that cast doubt on its place among the concert of civilized nations motivated its reform and expansion. This study suggests that, given the potential costs of transnational racialization threats, states across the region developed agencies and practices that expanded their capacity to manage their racialized national images among international audiences. Against the threat of racialized imperialism and colonialism, Bolivian liberal reformers envisioned a diplomatic bureaucracy capable of negotiating Bolivia's place in the global racial imaginary abroad. This study emphasizes the central role of the diplomatic bureaucracy as a condition of possibility in these projects and directs attention to the role of race in the development of state agencies less commonly associated with race, such as diplomacy.

Both Bolivia and Uruguay broke ranks with the global drug prohibition regime by introducing novel drug policies. State control of the production and supply of coca and cannabis represents a clear departure from both the spirit and the letter of the international drug conventions. Although, the rationale, processes and outcomes of policy change were distinctive in many regards, this chapter posits that there are conceptual resemblances. In both countries, the leadership of a charismatic and idiosyncratic president has to be considered. Furthermore, in both countries, mobilisation and activism were also decisive. Lastly, in both countries novel drug policy responded to specific problems that decision-makers faced. Approaching drug policy reforms in Bolivia and Uruguay in terms of personal leadership, mobilisation and policy problems provides a useful analytical first-cut to assess the continuity and change in drug policy observable elsewhere. Additionally, scrutinising the reasons and motivations for undertaking drug policy reform also allows to better understand each country’s behaviour on the international stage.

In this chapter, the reality of Bolivia's current situation is presented, including details regarding the country's political, economic and environmental context. Then, alternate possible future scenarios are presented, developed by four different types of stakeholders in Bolivian society during four workshops that produced various suggestions on how to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic using a sustainable approach.

Several findings are incorporated into these scenarios, including potential risks, public policy recommendations and structural changes required to attain the best possible post-pandemic scenario for Bolivia, including the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the 2030 Agenda, especially SDGs 8, 13 and 17.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of institutional changes in Bolivia (2005-2016) in the power structures within the headquarters (HQs) of a Brazilian energy multinational corporation (MNC) and its subsidiaries in Bolivia.

This investigation is informed by a postcolonial South–South perspective. The Brazilian and Bolivian managers were interviewed and drawing techniques were used to unveil hidden power relationships. To achieve the multilayered objective, a Lukesian power framework was integrated into the analysis.

Traces of a postcolonial relationship between Brazil and Bolivia were found, even though Brazil never colonized Bolivia. The power structure within this MNC’s HQ and subsidiaries reflects a postcolonial relationship: local staff members see the Brazilian MNC as the holder of power of resources, process and meaning. Finally, despite its colonizing role, Brazil is depicted as a savior, not an exploiter. Much to the authors’ surprise, the institutional changes in Bolivia – the nationalization of its oil and gas reserves and the declaration of a plurinational state – have not affected the power relationships within the Brazilian MNC.

The contribution to postcolonial investigations within the international business field was carried out in different ways: a review of EMNC literature was conducted in the study for a South–South postcolonial perspective; empirical data from a case within South America were added; a Lukesian power perspective was integrated into the analysis; and finally, drawing techniques were used to unveil hidden power relations.

Bolivia's original Aymara and Quechua quinoa producers ¹ exported 32,000 tons of hand-grown Royal Quinoa valued at $74 million in 2018. Nevertheless, they continued to fall deeper into poverty as low market prices did not cover the cost of their carefully planted, culturally driven production (IBCE, 2018, INIAF, 2018). Quinoa, now a global commodity, had seen increased competition from newly emerging quinoa growing countries with ample financial investment, improved production, and greater supply driving prices down. The more expensive, slow farming methods used by the Bolivian producers who followed traditional social, economic, and environmental sustainability practices were not valued in world markets. In Bolivia, the original quinoa homeland, once booming quinoa towns lay empty. Eighty-percent of inhabitants had moved to cities, leaving behind their native languages, traditions, and indigenous ways. Yet the culture and belief system lived on. This chapter examines Suma Qamana and how the Andean perspectives on social, economic, and environmental sustainability manifested themselves in the Bolivian experience of Aymara and Quechua quinoa producers. What follows is a story of Andean resilience in the face of globalization, and development gone awry.

The resurgence of left governments in Latin America raised expectations for the reincorporation of popular sectors broadly writ into the political arena from which they largely had been excluded by governments committed to Washington Consensus policies. This was particularly true in cases where mobilization by broad-based, heterogeneous social movement coalitions set the stage for their election. In some cases highly contentious cycles of mass mobilization in the context of economic crisis and party system collapse opened opportunities for outsider left candidates and their new political movements and parties to sweep into office. This was the case of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and, partially, Argentina. In other cases institutional continuity prevailed but mass discontent with low average growth, increasing poverty and inequality, and declining opportunities drove the electorate to vote for more established left parties. Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile are the emblematic cases. In all cases, to a greater or lesser degree, there was an assumption of a closer alignment between left governments and social movements than before. This chapter tests such assumption in the case of Bolivia because it exhibited exceptionally favorable conditions for a close alignment of social movements and the government of Evo Morales, the country’s first president of indigenous origin.

The aim of this paper is to consider the role of mass mobilisations against international business in Bolivia and analyse their wider implications for the structure of the state, relating this to recent studies looking at the scope of resistance to international business.

The analysis draws from a series of formal interviews with key political actors in Bolivia which were part of a wider ethnographic study exploring the emergence of the new hegemonic bloc in the country. The narrative is framed using the discourse theory of Laclau, and the methodology inspired by Bourdieu's understanding of social ethnography.

The paper finds that the uprisings against international business in Cochabamba in 2000 and El Alto in 2003 were pivotal in developing a wider critical consciousness to oppose neoliberalism in Bolivia. Subsequently, these social movements constructed a new identity as the “people” and implemented a more radical form of democracy.

The time period studied is such that it was impossible to assess whether or not this counter‐hegemonic movement has established a hegemonic bloc that has the potential to filter out into international resistance movements against business.

The paper offers a range of insights that may be useful to social movements concerned with constructing national and international struggles against capitalism and/or neoliberalism.

As far as is known, this is one of the first papers to outline how civil society resistance to international business can lead to wholesale shifts in the balance of power within a nation state and the construction of a substantively new political order.