https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3945-6043
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ABSTRACT
Bolivia has held elections to departmental governments in 2010, 2015, and in 2021. This election report starts with an overview of the electoral systems applied in the nine regions and subsequently discusses the election outcomes for the three elections. Regional elections in Bolivia can be conceived to be both regionalised – suggested by increasing vote shares for regional parties – as well as to be third-order elections – suggested by having lower turnout rates than local and national elections. First, this election report will explore the extent to which regional elections are regionalised by looking at dissimilarity between party vote shares between elections and at the strength of regional parties. The question of whether regional elections are second or third-order is explored by looking at valid voting rates and vote share losses for the party in the national government.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editors of Regional and Federal Studies, and Tomas Dosek and Verónica Salles-Reese for comments on earlier versions of this report.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Departments are the intermediate level of administration in the Bolivian political systems, above municipal (local) politics and national politics. There is another intermediate level known as regional government which is only present within one department as a process of regional autonomy; however, departments are the most authoritative governments in the intermediate tier. Throughout this report, the terms regional and departmental are interchangeably used, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
2 These elections are not included in this report since they were only meant to vote the executive authority that would be later appointed by the president.
3 In 2006 Bolivia started a process to fully reform its Constitution.
4 Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija.
5 Chuquisaca, La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, and Potosí.
6 Among the possible explanations for the shift from a no-vote to a yes-vote in these new referenda the support from national incumbent stands out. In 2006 Morales and the MAS were against the idea of regional autonomy, while in 2009 they campaigned in favour of the proposal.
7 Even if they remain registered in the electoral roll, Bolivian citizens can be disabled to cast a vote as a penalization for not complying with mandatory voting. Other forms of penalizations are penalty fees and restrictions in in-person banking transactions if absentees do not formally present a valid reason to the electoral management body for not voting.
8 For information about elections and electoral systems prior to 2021, see OEP (Citation2012, Citation2017).
9 With the sole exception of Santa Cruz which already in 2010 had a two-round system.
10 It is also possible for a candidate to be elected as Governor if they accomplish a different type of majority with at least 40% of the vote and a 10 percent difference over the runner-up. This rule is also applied to elect the President.
11 The only exception to this trend is Beni's territorial assembly members, appointed by majoritarian rule in multiple-member districts.
12 Bolivia’s legal framework recognizes political parties, citizens groups, and indigenous peoples as valid political organizations to compete in elections. However, this report uses the term party to encompass all these organizations, unless it is stated explicitly.
13 Differences over time are not very common. See the online appendix for differences in electoral rules over time.
14 This is for indigenous peoples other than Quechuas and Aymaras.
15 See the online appendix for differences in electoral rules over time.
16 In regional elections lists are separated into different tiers between executive and legislative seats, and even within the latter for different types of assembly members. Even though this separation is possible, all candidates must be nominated by parties, thus, lists are presented to and perceived by voters as one-party list with executive authorities in top positions in the respective lists.
17 Vote shifts are more common between valid and invalid votes than between parties (Cordero Citation2014).
18 DIS = ½*Σ |XiN - XiR| in which XiN is the vote share of party i in a national election (N) and XiR is the vote share of party i in a subnational election (R).
19 DEMOCRATAS and CREEMOS competed in national elections in 2014 and 2020, respectively. The first, however, is part of an electoral coalition, and the latter is itself an alliance that competed in 2020, but with its main source of voting coming from Santa Cruz.
20 For example, the former Governor of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas, was elected with two different parties in 2010 and 2015.
21 Disaggregated data by department is available in the online appendix.
22 Commonly, turnout is around 5% more on average for national elections. For a detailed analysis of turnout in the 2021 elections, see Modica and Ascarrunz (Citation2021).