Why Stalemated Regime-Related Constellations Matter: Lessons from the Alleged 2019 Coup in Bolivia

Abstract The 2019 crisis in Bolivia, which led to the resignation of popular left-wing president Evo Morales under paradoxical circumstances and marked the abrupt end of more than a decade of bold social transformation, provides an opportunity to explore key conceptual challenges undertheorized in international studies. The events reveal a political constellation that could be described as a stalled transition, a condition largely overlooked in comparative studies. This is unique in that the democratic regime, broken by Evo Morales years before his resignation, was not fully replaced before his exit. This particular situation explains, among other things, why there could not have been a coup d’état when Evo Morales resigned, if one assumes that a coup d’état must break an existing order, which, as will be shown, was still in the process of being established. Furthermore, the nature of the authoritarian regime that Evo Morales installed during his presidency will be examined. To this end, the distinction between “downstream” and “upstream” rules of democracy is introduced. It is argued that Evo Morales’s anti-democratic acts primarily concerned the upstream domain and thus produced a sui generis authoritarian regime that cannot be convincingly described by the seemingly more appropriate concept of competitive authoritarianism.