Decolonizing the state: Indigenous politics and the limits of Bolivian plurinationalism

Decolonizing the state is an ethnographic exploration of the Bolivian Movement for Socialism (MAS) government's project of progressive state-building at the local level. While the MAS aimed to re-found the nation via legal and constitutional reforms aimed at empowering its majority indigenous population and dismantling colonial legacies, after twenty years in office it dramatically lost power. Based on long-term fieldwork in a Quechua-speaking community, this book examines first-hand the complex, often contradictory outcomes of state-led decolonization. It brings history and ethnography into dialogue with European critical theory, decolonial and indigenous thought to show how colonial state-making shaped Bolivia’s political order - and continues to constrain transformative change. At a time of growing uncertainty for the Latin American and global Left, Decolonizing the state offers a vital contribution to debates on state power, indigeneity, radical politics, and the practice of decolonization.