Illan Rua Wall (University of Galway – School of Law; University of Warwick – School of Law) has posted The Constitution of Turbulence on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
When the left-wing indigenous candidate Evo Morales was elected as President of Bolivia in 2006, the movement he led was faced with a significant problem. The political and legal structures established over the previous 40 years were inimical to the radical platform that swept him to power. The constitutional structures inscribed the state as the site of market stability, and a business-as-usual exclusion of the indigenous majority of Bolivia. The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government represented the antithesis of the political elites that had fashioned the Bolivian state for well over a century. If their coming to power was to have any lasting significance, the old state had to be overcome. This chapter argues that of the many novelties developed in the 2009 Bolivian constitution, one of the most intriguing was the generation of a radically new form of separation of powers. Where the conventional separation of powers internally divides power within the state apparatus, ensuring that no one arm of the state can overpower the others, the Bolivian model actively encouraged extra-systemic social movements. The constitution envisioned an active and continuing constituent power that counter-balanced the tendency of state structures to become ‘recursive’ in their power. In this way, the 2009 Bolivian experiment is a ‘constitution of turbulence’, something that would have important effects on the trajectory of the Bolivian state over the decade that followed its adoption. This would culminate in the 2019 coup and its subsequent defeat.
Highly recommended.