In 2016, Bolivians were asked a simple question: should President Evo Morales be allowed to run for another term? They answered no. Yet, one year later, Bolivia’s Constitutional Tribunal removed the country’s presidential term limits and allowed Morales to run again.

How did a president known for representation and redistribution come to ignore a direct popular vote? Resource nationalism gave Morales’s government more revenue and public support. At first, these advantages helped him respond to groups long excluded from politics. Over time, they also helped sustain MAS’s political dominance as institutional checks weakened. Nationalization did not make erosion inevitable. Under Morales, however, Bolivia became more inclusive, but less competitive.

Nationalization changed who the state represented

Morales turned years of public anger into government policy. Many Bolivians believed foreign companies and traditional elites benefited from natural resources while ordinary citizens were excluded. These tensions contributed to the 2003 Gas War, when protests against gas exports met deadly government repression. The crisis weakened confidence in traditional parties. Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, gained support from Indigenous organizations, coca growers, workers, and poorer citizens who felt ignored by the political system.

On May 1, 2006, Morales issued Supreme Decree 28701, declaring state control over hydrocarbon production and expanding the role of the state oil and gas company. Foreign companies were not immediately removed; they renegotiated contracts giving the government more control and revenue. Guillaume Fontaine, Iván Narváez, and Susan Velasco explain that Bolivia’s shift involved institutional changes, rather than simply political rhetoric. Their comparison with more market-oriented Peru shows that similar promises do not necessarily produce similar policies. In Bolivia, natural wealth became a tool for national sovereignty and public benefit.

The 2009 Constitution carried this transformation into politics. It officially created the “Plurinational State of Bolivia,” recognized Indigenous political traditions, and expanded social and Indigenous rights. These changes redefined who belonged to the Bolivian state and whose interests the government was expected to represent.

Resource revenue made inclusion visible

Hydrocarbon revenue helped Morales turn promises into programs. The MAS government expanded cash transfers, pensions, infrastructure, and public services. Bolivia also benefited from high commodity prices and demand for its exports. These economic improvements were significant. According to the World Bank, the percentage of Bolivians living on less than $5.50 per day, measured in 2011 purchasing-power terms, fell from 52.1 percent in 2005 to 26.1 percent in 2013. However, rising wages and jobs in construction and services also contributed to reducing poverty. Nationalization wasn’t the only explanation for their economic improvements.

The political effect went beyond money. Poor and Indigenous voters were not simply “bought” with benefits. They gained representation and evidence that policy could respond to them. Jana Morgan and Nathan Kelly find that declining ethnoracial inequality after MAS came to power strengthened support for democracy among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Bolivians. Robert Dahl’s distinction between inclusion and contestation explains Morales’s double-edged legacy. Inclusion concerns who can participate and be represented. Contestation concerns whether leaders face real opposition and can lose power. Morales expanded inclusion, creating democratic gains that a narrow focus on elections might miss. Yet stronger public support for democracy did not guarantee stronger institutional checks. Citizens could feel better represented even as the government became harder to challenge.

Political success created an uneven playing field

Electoral victories gave MAS legislative supermajorities, while resource revenue strengthened the government’s public image. Meanwhile, the opposition remained divided and associated with the unpopular order Morales had replaced. These conditions gave MAS a growing advantage. Omar Sánchez-Sibony argues that elections remained competitive but were no longer fully free or fair. MAS benefited from greater access to money and state resources, influence over electoral institutions, and a politicized judiciary. The problem was not simply that Morales kept winning, but that institutions needed to challenge his government increasingly favored the ruling party.

Relations with some social movements also worsened. Indigenous communities opposed a proposed highway through TIPNIS, an Indigenous territory and national park. Amnesty International attributed much of the dispute to the authorities’ failure to carry out free, prior, and informed consultation. This exposed a limit to Morales’s promise of inclusion: recognizing Indigenous rights did not necessarily mean respecting communities’ objections to government development plans.

The weakening of institutional checks reflects Nancy Bermeo’s concept of executive aggrandizement: elected leaders gradually weaken institutions that limit their power. Ozan Varol’s concept of stealth authoritarianism explains how this can occur through apparently legitimate legal procedures. Courts, legislatures, and elections continued to operate, but institutions meant to limit the executive increasingly supported it. Redistribution was not undemocratic, but using political and economic success to weaken accountability was.

The referendum became the breaking point

The dispute over presidential term limits made this erosion clearer. The 2009 Constitution allowed one consecutive presidential reelection, and a transitional clause appeared to count Morales’s first term. In 2013, however, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the new constitution had created a new political system. His first term therefore did not count, allowing him to run again in 2014. To allow Morales to run for another term, his supporters then proposed a constitutional amendment. In the February 2016 referendum, 51.3 percent voted “No” and 48.7 percent voted “Yes.” The result preserved the existing limit.

However, MAS legislators challenged the limits before the Constitutional Tribunal. On November 28, 2017, the court ruled that they violated political rights protected by the American Convention on Human Rights. Morales argued that voters should be free to choose any candidate. This argument placed the right to vote for Morales above both the public’s 2016 decision and the constitutional principle of alternation in power.

Legal scholar Sergio Verdugo describes the term limit as political “insurance” included in the 2009 constitutional agreement. Judicial review was supposed to protect that agreement. Instead, the Tribunal removed it. This was stealth authoritarianism through legal language. The court used human-rights reasoning to remove a limit voters had chosen to preserve. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights later concluded that unlimited presidential reelection is not an independent human right under the American Convention.

Democracy requires inclusion and restraint

Morales democratized Bolivia by changing who could participate in politics and benefit from the state. He also weakened democracy by refusing to accept the public’s power to limit his presidency. Both statements can be true. Bolivia shows why democracy requires inclusion and contestation together. Inclusion without meaningful competition can help incumbents entrench themselves, while competition without inclusion can leave democracy controlled by elites. Resource nationalism strengthened democracy when it made the state more responsive to excluded citizens. It strained democracy when the advantages it generated helped sustain a government whose institutional restraints were weakening.

Bolivia’s democratic condition remains mixed. Freedom House’s 2026 report rates the country “Free” at 69 out of 100 following a peaceful transfer of power, but gives it only one out of four points for judicial independence. As Bolivia turns toward lithium and other resources, the central question remains: can citizens control their natural wealth without allowing control over that wealth to become control over the institutions that decide who governs?