Indigenous Autonomy and the Contradictions of Plurinationalism in Bolivia Jason Tockman John Cameron ABSTRACT The government of Bolivia led by President Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party claims to be constructing a new postliberal or plurinational state. However, this alleged experiment in plurinationalism con- flicts with two central elements of government and MAS party strategy: the expansion of the economic development model based on the extraction of non- renewable natural resources, and the MAS’s efforts to control political space, including indigenous territories. This article analyzes these contradictions by examining how Bolivia’s constitution and legal framework appear to support indigenous autonomy while simultaneously constraining it. Specifically, it explores how political and bureaucratic processes have seriously limited oppor- tunities to exercise indigenous rights to autonomy. The article makes a compar- ative analysis of the implications of Bolivia’s experience for indigenous auton- omy and plurinationalism for other resource extraction–dependent states. I n Andean politics, plurinationalism has emerged as a way of reconceiving the nation-state, positing a departure from a liberal multicultural framework for con- structing state-society relations to a conceptualization of the state as the composite of multiple nations to which greater rights are extended. At plurinationalism’s core, proponents advocate for the broadening of collective rights to peoples whose exis- tence precedes the advent of the colonial and republican state. In the context of the historical marginalization and political exclusion of Bolivia’s indigenous majority (see Rivera Cusicanqui 1987; Klein 1992) and the increasingly effective indigenous mobilizations since the early 1990s, the country’s 2009 Constitution embraced the language of plurinationalism as the conceptual pillar by which the collective rights of autonomous self-government were expanded, in principle, to qualifying indige- nous groups. 1 Among other changes, the name of the country was officially changed to the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the congress was relabeled the Plurinational Legisla- tive Assembly, the term plurinational was embedded into the names of other state institutions, and the government incorporated indigenous symbolism into much of © 2014 University of Miami DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-2456.2014.00239.x Jason Tockman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia. tockman@alumni.ubc.ca. John Cameron is an associate professor and chair of the Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University. john.cameron@dal.ca.