A Multiparty System that Behaves Like a Two-Party System.

 The current President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is the first indigenous president in Latin American history. He reached the presidency in 2005 and is projected to win for the third consecutive time in the 2014 elections. Historically, the “white” (Spanish descents) elite has occupied the influential political positions of Bolivia. Evo Morales dislikes this reality and since his early days in politics has developed a proposal of “decolonization” from the white and exalted the rights of the indigenous, which he then included in the new Constitution. He rose to power by imposing his radical opinions and portraying himself as the voice of the indigenous population. Bolivia has four main parties: Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Plan Progreso para Bolivia (PPB), Unidad Nacional (UN), and Alianza Social. Morales has succeeded by appealing to the working class which although are not the ones who have power, they represent the majority of voters. In a country with Downs’ figure 3 (pg. 121) distribution of voters, Morales is taking over the large mode at the left.  Among his radical reforms are the alteration of the Constitution, the change of the name of the country itself (from The Republic of Bolivia to Pluri-National State of Bolivia), the change in the county’s official language (to include the indigenous dialects), and a nationalization of natural resources. In the last presidential elections (2009) the defeated parties altogether did not even obtained 40% of the votes. These results have encouraged the losing parties to merge with each other in hopes to obtain a greater portion of the voters than that received by Morales’ party. In other words, they are developing what Downs called an amalgamation.  For this reason, Bolivia’s multiparty system is acting as a two-party system in hopes to defeat a very popular extremist candidate. In this situation, Morales and his party are not trying to move from their dominate position but the other parties do want to get as close to him as possible. However, Morales extremist position favoring indigenous population and rejecting Bolivian's European roots has started to create the "anti-Evo" movement among professionals; an outcome predicted by Downs' theory of democracy.