Bolivia’s president is both chief of state and head of government, and is directly elected to a five-year term. A new presidential election was held in October 2020 after the results of the 2019 election were annulled. In the 2019 vote, after early results suggested a likely runoff between Morales, the incumbent, and the main opposition candidate, election officials’ subsequent release of a tally showing Morales with an outright victory prompted mass demonstrations. The Organization of American States (OAS) electoral observation mission strongly criticized the tally showing Morales with an outright victory, saying it contradicted independent counts. Independent analyses have since both contradicted and supported the statistical evidence behind the OAS’s assessment.

In November 2019, as protests, counterprotests, and accompanying violence intensified, Morales, Vice President Álvaro García Linera, and the heads of the Senate and the lower chamber resigned, after Morales lost the support of the military and police forces. Days later, Jeanine Áñez Chavez, a senior senator and the highest-ranking official in the line of succession who had not yet resigned, was endorsed by the TCP to assume the presidency on an interim basis. Áñez indicated that she would serve only until a new election could be held, though in January 2020, she announced her candidacy for president in the next election. She eventually withdrew from the race in September 2020.

An agreement between the interim government and the parliament, mediated by the United Nations, the European Union (EU), and the Roman Catholic Church, established a new election date and a new Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). The election was supposed to be held in May 2020; however, it was postponed until October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the October 2020 poll showed a clear victory for MAS candidate Luis Arce, who won over 55 percent of the vote, precluding the need for a runoff. Voter turnout was recorded at 84 percent. Multiple independent observer missions deemed the poll credible and fair, and competing parties and civil society stakeholders accepted the results.

The Plurinational Legislative Assembly (ALP) consists of a 130-member Chamber of Deputies and a 36-member Senate. Legislative terms are five years.

Due to allegations of irregularities in the 2019 general elections, the results of the vote for legislative representatives were considered invalid, and in November 2019, the ALP unanimously passed a law calling for new presidential and legislative elections to be held in 2020. In the October 2020 elections, the MAS won 75 of the 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 21 seats in the Senate. The opposition Comunidad Ciudadana (Citizen Community) party secured 39 seats in the lower house and 11 seats in the upper house, and the new We Believe (Creemos) alliance won 16 and 4 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, respectively.

The OAS’s final report on the 2019 elections claimed that the overall results were not verifiable, due to “willful manipulation” abetted by a biased TSE. After Morales’s resignation, the parliament agreed on a transparent formula to reconstitute an independent TSE in December 2019. The 2020 general elections, administered by a new TSE, were widely considered independent and free from undue political influence.

However, in 2023 the TSE faced renewed political pressure from the two wings of MAS, which was split between a faction led by Morales and another led by Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca. At a national party congress in early October 2023, Morales was named MAS’s leader and presidential candidate in the 2025 election, in proceedings observed by the TSE. Arce and Choquehuanca, as well as several leaders from the social movements that make up the party’s base, abstained. In a mass gathering of their supporters about two weeks later, Arce and Choquehuanca disavowed the congress for alleged procedural failures. At the end of October, the TSE annulled the MAS congress due to procedural shortcomings, and called on the party to hold a new congress. Morales supporters alleged that the TSE acted under pressure from Arce.

For years, Bolivian politics was characterized by MAS efforts to abolish presidential term limits. In 2017, MAS lawmakers overturned the articles in the constitution setting presidential term limits by consulting the TCP, a body the lawmakers themselves had appointed, despite voters rejecting this measure in a 2016 referendum. In June 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found that term limits do not violate rights protected by the American Convention on Human Rights. The TCP in late December 2023 issued a ruling based on the IACHR’s criteria that imposed a two-term term limit for president and other offices, whether consecutive or not. The decision effectively barred Morales from running in 2025.

Citizens have the right to organize political parties. MAS has dominated politics since 2005, drawing support from social movements, trade unions, and civil society actors. In the 2019 election, the most prominent opposition party, Comunidad Ciudadana, attracted individuals who opposed persistent efforts to extend Morales’s term.

In January 2020, Luis Fernando Camacho—a regional leader from Santa Cruz who led the mass protests against Morales in 2019—founded the Creemos alliance. Creemos quickly became the leading party in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s richest region, where Camacho was elected governor in 2021.

Systematic judicial prosecution of opposition leaders—which MAS has exercised but also suffered from when it lost power in 2019—serves as a disincentive for the formation of new political groupings. As of late 2023, Camacho remained in pretrial detention, after being arrested one year earlier on accusations of carrying out a coup in 2019.

There are no formal institutional barriers that prevent opposition parties from participating in elections. Between 2005 and 2019, however, the overwhelming dominance of MAS, aided by its use of public resources to back its campaigns, made it difficult for opposition parties to gain power through elections. MAS candidates achieved sweeping victories in the local elections held in March 2021, but lost the mayoral races in Bolivia’s largest cities, and most gubernatorial races.

Following the 2019 presidential election, the OAS observer mission claimed that the results of the vote were marred by gross irregularities. Elections held in 2020 were generally considered to be free and fair. However, opposition leaders contend that some procedures, such as a requirement that parties hold primaries several months before the national election, give a disproportionate advantage to the ruling party, which has access to public funds to sustain such a long campaign period.

People are generally free to make political decisions without undue influence from the military, foreign powers, or other influential groups. Several violent confrontations occurred between supporters of competing parties in the run-up to the 2020 election, but the levels of violence that preceded and followed the 2019 elections have decreased in severity since 2020.

However, tensions remained high into 2022, and violence between MAS supporters and supporters of the regionalist movement in Santa Cruz escalated after the Arce administration announced that a national census, originally planned for November 2022, would be postponed until 2024, purportedly due to administrative challenges. Due to the growing population of the Santa Cruz region, the stronghold of the opposition, the delay was deemed as giving unfair financial and parliamentary advantages to MAS. In 2023, divisions within MAS triggered violent confrontations between pro-Morales and pro-Arce militants at party events, as well as at gatherings held by the peasant organizations that constitute the main support base of the party.

Adult citizens enjoy universal and equal suffrage.

The constitution recognizes 36 Indigenous nationalities within a plurinational state, and formalizes political autonomy in Indigenous territories. Indigenous groups are well represented in government, and seven seats are reserved for Indigenous peoples in the Chamber of Deputies. However, the interests of Indigenous groups are often overlooked by politicians.

Formally, Bolivia has progressive legislation that guarantees equal political representation for women and seeks to protect them from political violence. While women are well represented in politics, holding 46 percent of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and nearly 56 percent of those in the Senate, sexism and patriarchal attitudes undermine their work, particularly at local levels.

Elected officials are free to set and implement government policy without undue interference from nonstate actors. However, opposition members charge that the MAS majority in the legislature has opened the space for strong executive influence on legislative processes, closing the possibility of debating policy at the legislative level.

Historically, powerful social movements have been able to exert pressure on the ALP to prevent the adoption of policies seen as detrimental to their interests. Cooperative miners have become one of the most powerful pressure groups in recent years, especially as the prices of gold peaked in international markets. Although the miners are known for their environmentally detrimental practices, they have received support from Arce in exchange for backing his bid to control MAS, including an agreement by the president to relax environmental rules to allow miners to operate in new areas.

Anticorruption laws are poorly enforced, and corruption affects a range of government entities and economic sectors, including law enforcement bodies and extractive industries. Public procurement processes are frequently compromised by bribery.

Bolivia has no law guaranteeing access to public information. Elected officials by law must make asset declarations, but these are unavailable to the public.

While the constitution guarantees freedom of expression, in practice, journalists encounter harassment in connection with critical or investigative reporting. Media outlets critical of the government faced harassment from administration officials during the Morales and Áñez presidencies. Similar harassment has continued under the Arce administration, which has characterized journalists as liars and independent media outlets as partisan actors.

Members of the press face harassment, violent attacks, and censorship carried out by the state and progovernment forces. The state also uses its economic clout to pressure outlets it considers part of the opposition. One of these outlets was the newspaper Página Siete, which stopped publishing after declaring bankruptcy in June 2023. The outlet’s former top executives alleged that successive MAS administrations had choked the outlet economically by withdrawing state advertising and imposing questionable tax penalties.

Journalists are also harassed online by both pro-government and opposition supporters.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution and generally upheld in practice. The 2009 constitution ended the Roman Catholic Church’s official status, and created a secular state.

Academic freedom is legally guaranteed and upheld in practice.

Private discussion is robust and generally free from interference or surveillance.

In a 2022 national poll on polarization, close to 20 percent of respondents said they had cut off relations with friends or family due to disagreements over the events of 2019. Moreover, a little over half of the respondents said they practiced self-censorship when discussing politics to avoid conflicts with others.

Bolivian law protects the right to peaceful assembly. However, many past protests have been marred by clashes between demonstrators and police, as well as physical confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters.

Widespread protests during the 2019 elections were characterized by high levels of violence among protesters, counterprotesters, and security forces. A report issued in August 2021 by the Interdisciplinary Group of Experts (GIEI), commissioned through an agreement between the IACHR and the Bolivian government, found that during the protests that led to Morales’s resignation, his administration facilitated the commission of human rights violations by its supporters against the opposition. The same report found that the armed forces committed serious human rights violations, especially against Morales supporters, after Morales resigned.

In October and November 2022, large protests, featuring occasional violent clashes with security forces, were held in the Santa Cruz region against the Arce government’s decision to delay the national census until 2024. Protests erupted again in Santa Cruz in December, following Camacho’s arrest on charges of terrorism for his role in the 2019 protests against Morales.

While antigovernment protests did not reach high levels of violence during 2023, violent clashes occurred between Arce and Morales supporters at MAS summits or inside the peasant organizations that constitute the party’s backbone. In August 2023, clashes between these groups during a congress to elect the main executives of the country’s largest peasant organization resulted in 450 injuries.

Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate but are subject to some legal restrictions. In 2016, the TCP dismissed a petition arguing that two statutes in the country’s NGO laws gave the government license to dissolve NGOs. Government officials from all political affiliations have at times smeared rights groups as political conspirators.

Labor and peasant unions are an active force wielding significant political influence.

The country’s official labor code is inconsistent with Bolivian law; for example, it prohibits public sector unions, yet many public sector workers are able to legally unionize. A National Labor Court hears cases of antiunion discrimination, but tends to hand down verdicts slowly, and penalties for antiunion discrimination are not consistently applied.

Bolivia stands as the sole country that appoints justices via popular elections. However, judges on the Supreme Court (TSJ), the TCP, and other entities are first nominated through a two-thirds vote in the legislature. For years, this allowed MAS to dominate the candidate selection process, producing a lenient judiciary at all levels. The popular election of judges has politicized and factionalized appointments, creating further opportunities for corruption. In addition to its politicization, the judiciary remains overburdened.

The use of the judiciary to prosecute opposition leaders was a common practice during the Morales administration and continued under interim president Áñez’s government, which pressured prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against hundreds of individuals associated with the Morales administration, including Morales himself. In October 2020, the outgoing legislature approved the indictment of 11 ministers from the interim government. Áñez was arrested on multiple charges in March 2021, including conspiracy, sedition, and terrorism. In June 2022, she was convicted of illegally assuming the presidency in 2019 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, after being tried as an ordinary citizen and not under special procedures for former presidents. Another opposition leader, Camacho was arrested in December 2022 on terrorism charges following antigovernment protests in Santa Cruz; he remained in pretrial detention at the end of 2023.

The increasing divisions within MAS have led to a further deterioration of judicial independence. After MAS lost its two-thirds legislative majority in 2020, the approval of judicial candidates stalled. This was deadlock continued in 2023 and was exacerbated by the divisions within MAS, with pro-Morales and other opposition legislators contending that Arce wants to illegally extend the mandate of current allied justices, so he can manipulate them ahead of the 2025 election. In late December, the TCP extended the mandate of the country’s high judicial authorities before it expired at the end of 2023.

Many people have difficulty accessing the justice system because they lack resources to travel to courts and other relevant offices. In criminal matters, people accused of committing crimes can go years before they have a formal trial; the cases of Áñez and Camacho are prominent examples. Police are poorly paid and receive inadequate training, and corruption within the police force remains a problem.

In September 2022, a preliminary IACHR report revealed that, in 2009, while Morales was president, Bolivian security forces detained, tortured, and extrajudicially executed at least three people who allegedly belonged to a terrorist cell that was supporting a separatist movement in the region of Santa Cruz. The 2022 report found the Bolivian government responsible for the human rights abuses stemming from this incident.

During the 2019 crisis, both sympathizers and detractors of Morales had access to explosives, including dynamite, homemade rocket launchers, and Molotov cocktails, and used them against each other and the security forces, leading to loss of life, property, and transport infrastructure. There have been past periods where segments of the population used illegitimate force in pursuit of political goals.

The 2010 antiracism law contains measures to combat discrimination and impose criminal penalties for discriminatory acts. However, racism and associated discrimination is common in the country, especially against Indigenous groups.

Bolivia has laws in place that prohibit discrimination against LGBT+ people. However, these laws are rarely enforced, and LGBT+ people still experience societal discrimination.

There are no formal limits on people’s ability to change their place of residence, employment, or education, but choices can be limited by socioeconomic difficulties. Roads are occasionally blockaded as part of protest actions, impeding free movement.

Women enjoy the same formal rights to property ownership as men, but discrimination is common, leading to disparities in property ownership and access to resources.

The rights of Indigenous people to prior consultation in cases of natural resource extraction and land development are not fully upheld by law or in practice.

The constitution reserves marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, and makes no provision for same-sex civil unions. However, in July 2020, the Second Constitutional Chamber of the La Paz Department Tribunal overturned a decision of the civil registry office denying a same-sex couple registration of their civil union, which was later officially approved.

Gender-based violence is a serious problem, and laws criminalizing violence against women are not well enforced. A new law increasing the criminal penalties for those convicted of rape, infanticide, and femicide was enacted in July 2022. According to preliminary data from the Bolivian Observatory for Citizen Security and the Fight Against Drugs (OBSCD), Bolivia registered 81 cases of femicides in 2023. Many women lack access to birth control and reproductive health care.

Bolivia is a source country for the trafficking of men, women, and children for forced labor and prostitution, and the country faced international criticism over permissive legislation regarding child labor in 2018, when the country changed the minimum working age to 14.