Bolivia’s natural resources have served as a ‘mechanism of trade’ mobilized by competing interest groups to build coalitions, create political pacts, and negotiate political settlements in which dominant actors attempt to win over those resistant to a particular vision of development and/or governance. These pacts and settlements are revisited constantly, reflecting the weak and fragmented power of the central state and of the elite and persistent tensions between national and subnational elites. Ideas about, and modes of, natural resource governance have been central to periods of instability and stability, and to significant periods of political rupture. The period since 2006 has been characterized by a stable settlement involving an alliance between the presidency, his dominant party, and national social movements. This settlement is sustained through bargains with parts of the economic elite and subnational actors with holding power, as well as through ideas of resource nationalism and state-led developmentalism.
