“Somos Autonomistas de Siempre” Public University Politics and the Negotiation of Autonomy in Bolivia (original) (raw)

This paper analyzes the contentious April 2010 public university elections for Rector and Vice Rector at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) in Bolivia. University elections are especially politically significant in countries like Bolivia, in which public universities have constitutionally protected autonomy and have often served as bastions of political opposition. Using quantitative and qualitative techniques, we describe and analyze how Bolivia’s university elections interact with national and subnational politics. Looking at the three most recent rectorate elections (2004, 2007, 2010), we measure electoral volatility, party system stability, and partisan alignments within university elections. We combine this with long-term fieldwork and content analysis of newspaper coverage of each election to show how university electoral politics were reshaped after the 2005 victory of Evo Morales and his MAS party,. We argue that studies of electoral politics in settings such as universities, unions, or civic associations offer insights how key constituencies interact with hegemonic parties.