In this thesis I analyze the struggles over recognition of indigenous peoples in the context of the process of decolonization undertaken by the government of Evo Morales in Bolivia after he was elected the first indigenous president of the country in · December 2005 until 2012. I address the question of why, despite the recognition of indigenous peoples promoted by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) government and incorporated into the Constitution of 2009, indigenous leaders from the highlands and the lowlands remain dissatisfied. In doing so, I look at the grounds of the indigenous criticisms of the language of indigeneity used by the government and the role of the state in the process of decolonization. Following the theoretical approach proposed by James Tully and the theoretical tools provided by political discourse analysis, my discussion focuses on the languages and the practices in which the problem is defined and the indigenous demands and criticisms are articulated. My argument is that there is a divergence between the discourse of the government and those of indigenous leaders. I suggest that that divergence is founded on the perpetuation of pre-existent patterns of recognition by the state that have shaped its relationship with indigenous peoples throughout the history of Bolivia, which has resulted in a lack of acknowledgment of the capacity of dissent and discursive diversity of and among indigenous peoples. The case of Bolivia makes an important contribution to the debate about recognition in multicultural societies. On the one hand, it challenges the political borders that generally identify indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous state as the actors to be reconciled. On the other, it touches on the form and scope of the cultural recognition required, pointing to an understanding of recognition as negotiation, and to the different levels in which that recognition should take place.

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How can we explain the electoral success of Evo Morales' Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) in 2005 and what are its political consequences? A discursive analysis of MAS highlights that Bolivia's recent political crises involved a process of hegemonic construction of a political identity of "the people" and of an imagined community of the "plurinational" nation by MAS. This hegemonic articulation was a key factor for MAS to become Bolivia's largest political party. It entailed the split of society into two antagonistic poles of "the people" and "the traditional politicians". The latter were made responsible for the design of the existing political system and thus for the long standing grievance of the exclusion of the indigenous peoples. MAS, by contrast, positioned itself as idiosyncratic "political instrument" that acted with one foot inside and the other outside the political institutions owing to its strong links with the social movements. This idiosyncrasy enabled MAS to bridge the previously disconnected spheres of official and extra-institutional politics. It entailed a process of de-institutionalisation of the discredited political system since MAS refused to play by the established rules of the game. However, through the bridging of the two spheres it moved those previously disenchanted with the political system to the centre of the polis. This initiated a process of re-institutionalisation of a "refounded" state with the promise to install adequate institutions uniting Bolivia's "plurinational" diversity. In sum, MAS united all disenfranchised by the status quo into one identity against a common antagonist with the consequence of a dialectic process of de-institutionalisation and reinstitutionalisation. The analysis of the discourse of MAS serves as a mirror for democracy in Bolivia. It reveals the challenge of squaring the rupture with a discredited past and the exclusion of de-legitimised political actors, with the continuity of democracy and with the aim to hegemonically represent society.

This thesis is about the political ascent of Bolivia's coca leaf producers in the Chapare province and their use of community owned radio. At the heart of the thesis is the story of how community leaders and media producers in the Chapare operate radio with the aim to enhance the unity, solidarity, and organization of the coca union. The second line of enquiry that runs throughout this thesis deals with the coca union’s mutation into a governing party and the impact that this has had on the management and broadcast content of Radio Soberanía. The thesis reveals that rather than being ‘the sovereign voice of the Bolivian Cocalero’; today Radio Soberanía is operated as a propaganda tool by the MAS government. The radio has shifted from its original status as a radical pirate station to be considered by members of the coca union as official government radio. This creates problems for Radio Soberanía because members of the coca union remain cynical about state backed media and the state itself, even when they vote for the government and can see it as aligned with their interests.

The politicization of ethnic diversity has long been regarded as perilous to ethnic peace and national unity, its detrimental impact memorably illustrated in Northern Ireland, former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. The process of indigenous mobilization followed by regional mobilizations in Bolivia over the past decade has hence been seen with some concern by observers in policy and academia alike. Yet these assessments are based on assumptions as to the nature of the causal mechanisms between politicization and ethnic tensions; few studies have examined them directly. This thesis systematically analyzes the impact of ethnic mobilizations in Bolivia: to what extent did they affect ethnic identification, ethnic relations, and national unity? I answer this question through a time-series analysis of indigenous and regional identification in political discourse and citizens’ attitudes in Bolivia and its department of Santa Cruz from 2000 to 2010. Bringing together literature on ethnicity from across the social sciences, my thesis first develops a framework for the analysis of ethnic change, arguing that changes in the attributes, meanings, and actions associated with an ethnic category need to be analyzed separately, as do changes in dynamics within an in-group and towards an out-group and supra-group, the nation. Based on this framework, it examines the development of the two discourses through a qualitative analysis of anthropological accounts, news reports, and expert interviews. In both discourses, the unity of the respective in-group is increasingly stressed, before diverging conceptions become ever more prominent. Finally, my thesis quantitatively examines changes in in-group identification, out-group perception, and national unity, using survey data collected by the Latin American Public Opinion Project over the decade. It finds changes in identification that can be clearly linked to political mobilization. More citizens identify as indigenous and Cruceño, respectively, and do so more strongly than before. Yet identification then decreases again, concomitant with the growing divisions in discourse. Moreover, the rise in identification is not associated with a rise in out-group antagonism or a drop in national unity. On the contrary, the latter has increased steadily among all Bolivians. Besides shedding light on ethnic relations in Bolivia, this analysis thus also contributes to the wider debate on the effects of ethnic politics. It shows that identifications do indeed change in response to mobilizations, that they do so more quickly than expected and not necessarily in the manner as expected, demonstrating that it is necessary to carefully distinguish different elements of ethnicity.