Stakeholder Politics in Bolivia: Revisiting Second Generation Reforms

Abstract

Some of the most ambitious and innovative public policy reforms adopted in Latin America in recent years have made stakeholder appeals to citizen participation, self-help and ownership.¹ By involving and mobilizing potential beneficiaries during reform adoption and forwarding the long-term benefits of reform to the present, politicians have hoped to make contentious reforms self-sustaining. However, five years into reform implementation, questions of long-term institutional survival are more than ever on the minds of reformers. Poor institutional performance, public disenchantment and policy reversals have started to unravel some of the more political and volatile aspects of privatization, pension and decentralization reforms throughout the region. How to make complex and divisive policy reforms succeed? How to move from policy adoption to implementation, from short-term feasibility to long-term viability? Where do the so-called second generation reforms fit in the larger scheme of political and economic development?²