Why I endorsed Evo Morales

Well, “endorsed” isn’t exactly the right word, but I did say “simpatizante.”  Here are my views:

1. I disagree with most of his economic policy, for reasons you can find stated in Adam Smith and the other classical economists.

2. Governments work very hard to stay in power.

3. In a weighted average of public opinion sense, I think of Bolivia as about 60-70% “indigenous,” one way or another.

4. If a Bolivian government is not strongly connected to the country’s indigenous population, that government cannot have a strong base.  Yet it will still work hard to stay in power (#2), which will mean it will resort to oppressions and distortions, with high long-run costs.  Bolivian history has seen an especially large number of coups and attempted coups, illustrating this weakness of the power base, which you can think of as the major problem in historical Bolivian public choice.  Think of Mancur Olson on permanent vs. temporary bandits, where most of the past bandits have been temporary, and thus Bolivian governance has been of extremely low quality, even relative to its region.

5. The government of Evo Morales is quite popular and pretty stable.  It has a strong and enduring power base, partly because of its specific policies and partly for symbolic reasons, such as its strong and explicit attachment to indigenous culture and “cosmovisions,” a notion newly embedded in the nation’s constitution.

6. The stability gains from #5 — the permanency of the bandit so to speak — exceed the costs from #1.

7. A democratic Bolivia will have “an indigenous government” sooner or later, better sooner.  Let’s hope they learn some better economic policy.  Something like the Morales government was in any case a necessary step, again without denying #1.

8. Bolivia is too decentralized for the Morales government to collapse into true dictatorship and Chavismo of Venezuela.  That said, I would feel better if it were assured that the Morales government were to be limited in term.

9. See also my reasons why I am optimistic about Bolivia, including their fiscal prudence, supported by Morales I might add.

I made this argument to an audience of elite Bolivians and elite Bolivian students.  Some of them hated it, some of them really liked it.  A speaker should usually try to shake up his or her listeners in some manner.