Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the relationship between cultural conceptions of leadership practiced in Bolivian civil society organizations and the particular style of populism enacted by Evo Morales.

Paper long abstract:

As one of the most charismatic Latin American politicians to have emerged in recent years, the Bolivian president Evo Morales spends much of his time traveling the country and inaugurating public works financed by a program whose name translates as "Bolivia Changes, Evo Delivers On His Promise." The program points to the highly personalized conception of leadership enacted by Morales. What is the appeal that this conception has for the Bolivian population?

As pivotal elements of the political imaginary, cultural conceptions of leadership frame relations between societies and their politicians. Populist leaders are enabled by the cultural acceptance of personalized authority, and they are less likely to rise where societies favor process over persons. At the same time, conceptions of leadership are rooted in the economic, religious, recreational and associational life of a society as much as they emerge in the political sphere.

This paper is based on the premise that forms of leadership rehearsed in civil society organizations reveal something about the types of political leaders a given society selects and supports. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork with an association of folkloric groups that participate in Bolivia's large and symbolically laden patron saint festivals, it provides an exploration of the relationship between, on the one hand, conceptions of leadership as they are lived in civil society organizations and, on the other hand, the structure of Bolivian populism as enacted by Evo Morales.