In Bolivia, social movements set the agenda for the democratization of society and the state. The natural resource regimes are characterized by alternating nationalizations and privatizations, whereby nationalizations enhance the possibility to extend societal control over the resources and thereby democratize the resource regime.
On the other hand, it leads to what Quijano describes as ‘coloniality of power’, a rule pattern made up of a specific combination of racism and global capitalism.
This presupposes a political economy characterized by exports of primary goods and therefore value transfers from peripheral to core countries. Today, natural gas is the main natural resource. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the state economy was based on silver, tin, saltpetre and on rubber exports. In Bolivia, from the 16th to the 19th century, the exploitation of silver in Potosí and the exports to Europe made Europe’s industrialization possible. Latin American societies and states formed around the disputes about control over natural resources, as Bolivian intellectual Rene Zavaleta highlighted. This is a consequence of competition between different political priorities on diverse scales. However, until now, mainly the state economy in the extractive sector has been intensified and other economic forms and actors have not been equally supported. The plurinational state project proposed by the indigenous peasant majority in the Bolivian population aspires to strengthen the diverse economic forms that are being practiced throughout the country.