Central governments like the administrations of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Christina Fernández de Kirchner (since 2007) in Argentina and Evo Morales (since 2006) in Bolivia launched processes to reverse neoliberal economic policy on the one hand, and, especially in the Bolivian refoundation process, towards new normative orders and transformations of liberal and republican concepts of state, state organization and souvereignty of the people, as well as new modes of democratic processes on the other hand. Two decades after re-democratization and neoliberal reforms, this induced redefinitions of state as interventionist, distribution modes of natural resources export rents as well as restructuring of the internal state organization. These processes are accompanied by new and often conflictive and territorially rooted dynamics between the central state, subnational levels, indigenous groups and politically peripheric but economic important regions. These struggles culminated in conflicts between agricultural producers and the Kirchner government in 2008, also known as “paro del campo” in Argentina, and between the autonomy movements in lowland departments driven by local economic elites of agricultural sector and the Morales government in Bolivia. In both cases, the interventionist role of the state in economy and the redistribution of the natural resources export rents to finance expanded social politics are questioned by regionally rooted economic elites. They aim to undermine the ‘postliberal’ project of the central government and claim to be the backbone of national economy and the nation state. By focusing on the interrelation of both dimensions, centralised economic policy on the one hand and imaginary constructions of a fragmented political community on the other hand, we explore re-inventions of democratic concepts, relations between the political center and regions, individual versus collective rights, competing ideas of legitimation, alike the shifts of the liberal framework.
