Towards post-liberal democracy in Latin America? A conceptual framework applied to Bolivia

Abstract

Recent political changes across Latin America that challenge mainstream conceptions of liberal democracy have led to speculation about some kind of postliberal democracy possibly emerging in the region. Up to now, however, there has been no systematic assessment of this proposition or any explicit conception of post-liberal democracy. This article fills this research gap by proposing a conceptual framework for analysing political change in the direction of post-liberal democracy, in Latin America and beyond, and probes the plausibility of this framework in a case study of Bolivia. It shows that the concept of post-liberal democracy helps us make sense of the contemporary transformation of Bolivian democracy and that it has comparative advantages over alternative conceptual frameworks such as radical populism and defective - that is, illiberal or delegative - democracy.