Owing to the standardization of the LPP throughout Bolivia, there is little variation in the experiences of local government with respect to the design of institutional innovations. All municipalities were required to formulate POAs and five-year municipal development plans using a prescribed participatory planning methodology. All were required to form vigilance committees comprising representatives from civil society organizations. As in Ecuador, indigenous political parties added features derived from indigenous and campesino-union cultures, such as the minga, the fila comunitaria (community line) method for selecting electoral candidates, and accelerated rotation of elected leaders.

Cases diverge with respect to implementation in relation to the political, social, and economic context. This context varied sharply between the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba. As in Ecuador, I chose a small set of geographically clustered cases from two regions where indigenous parties had their greatest electoral success. I show how distinct political conditions in the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba resulted in variations in implementation affecting the democratic quality of local governance. In contrast with Ecuador, where leadership was decisive, what is notable in Bolivia is not the impact of leadership but, rather, its conspicuous absence owing to the overweening influence of local and national movement–party logics and rules, cultural and political norms of accelerated office rotation that prevent mayors from establishing authority, and the top-down imposition of local governance designs that diminished the scope of mayoral initiative. Statistical information with respect to available socioeconomic indicators is presented in Table 6.1.

Durable radical democratic institutional innovations have this in common: an exceptional mayor to initiate the innovation, to guide it through its initial, rocky stages, and to ensure that it survives the innovating mayor's departure. Mayoral leadership was particularly important in Ecuador because mayors there have broader scope to initiate and design new institutions. In the most acclaimed Ecuadorian cases (Cotacachi and Otavalo) the innovating mayor is still in office after multiple terms. In contrast, there are several once-acclaimed cases (Guamote and Guaranda) in which a mayor oversaw the design and implementation of promising institutional innovations but then left office and the new government was unwilling or unable to sustain the institution – even though the replacement mayor was from the same party. The close correlation between the presence of the initiating mayor and sustained democratic institutional innovation underscores the importance of particular leaders to any explanation of the conditions for beneficial reform.

To a social scientist seeking generalizable conditions that could point us toward replicable solutions for troubled, conflictual democracies, the apparent need for highly qualified leaders is frustrating.

Some observers – anthropologists, philosophers, human rights' activists, development professionals – were horrified when indigenous peoples shed their political innocence and entered formal politics in significant numbers in the mid-1990s. Would this be the end of “pure” native cultures uncorrupted by Western politics? Would we no longer have living, morally superior models of prepolitical human relations to juxtapose to modern, complex, failing states?

For the most part indigenous citizens (and not a few political scientists) were thrilled with the prospect of empowering Latin America's most-excluded groups and with the possible implications for democracy of this promising and unexpected turn of events. As a Pachakutik militant explained to me one afternoon in Quito in July 2005,

In the 1990s, as South America's party systems began to undergo serious crises, indigenous peoples formed electorally viable political parties for the first time. In Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, and Venezuela, candidates emphasizing an ethnically indigenous identity and representing parties affiliated with indigenous social movement organizations gained control of local and intermediate governments, as well as a foothold in national legislatures. They became most successful in Bolivia and Ecuador, where today they dominate dozens of local governments and control significant blocs in Congress. In 2005 and 2002, respectively, indigenous parties elected the country's president.

It is no accident that the new indigenous parties emerged at a time when public confidence in parties had plummeted. The failure of parties to reduce poverty and inequality, to protect citizens from crime and violence, to promote economic development, and to protect human rights two decades after the end of military rule generated declines in public support for parties and for democracy itself (Drake and Hershberg 2006: 10; Hagopian 2005: 320; O'Donnell 2004: 46–51; UNDP 2004: 62). Latin American citizens view traditional political parties as corrupt, self-serving, incapable of addressing complex economic and social problems or protecting citizens rights and the rule of law, and unresponsive to increasing demands for action (Hagopian 2005: 321; Mainwaring and Hagopian 2005: 2; O'Donnell 2004). Voters are searching for representation alternatives that offer real solutions, as opposed to patriotic platitudes. Many are attracted to indigenous peoples' parties because they seem to provide an alternative.

Within the same legal and macropolitical framework, Ecuadorian municipalities responded differently to the opportunity presented by decentralization and the political ascent of indigenous social movements and their electoral vehicles. In this chapter I describe the evolution of local government institutions in five cantons in which Pachakutik won office in 1996 or 2000. In two, Pachakutik remains in power and presides over what outsiders consider to be “model” radical democratic institutions. In three others, Pachakutik lost power to rival indigenous sectors and leadership cupulas: to the evangelical party Amauta Jatari/Amauta Yuyay in Chimborazo province and to the mestizo party ID in Guaranda. The five case studies presented represent two distinct geographic biopsies of Ecuadorian democracy. The two model cases, Cotacachi and Otavalo, are located contiguously in the northern sierra province of Imbabura. The three more-problematic cases lie contiguously across the two southern sierra provinces of Chimborazo and Guaranda. Comparable socioeconomic statistics for each municipality are presented in Table 5.1.

Despite the lack of top-down diffusion of specific participatory–deliberative or traditional–cultural institutions, some common features may be observed in all five Pachakutik-led municipalities. First, mayors made a great effort to meet with constituents as individuals or in groups. In small, rural, majority-indigenous cantons Pachakutik mayors and councillors engage in considerable face-to-face interaction with indigenous communities. In larger cantons, distant communities are less able to participate directly but receive regular communications in their own language from municipal authorities.

Decentralization and democratization in Bolivia and Ecuador occurred in the context of regional and global trends that shifted powers from central to local governments and expanded citizen participation in public decision making. These trends converged with the return to civilian-elected rule in Latin America in the late 1970s and accelerated and deepened over the next decade. Latin America in subsequent decades produced some of the most admired decentralization experiences (Eaton 2004: 36). Development professionals embraced the writings of political theorists extolling the “normative, substantive and instrumental benefits of participation” (Humphreys et al. 2006: 585–6). By the 1990s virtually all major development players – multilateral and bilateral donors and civil society groups – had embraced a preference for governance methods that facilitate the autonomous involvement of stakeholders in the choice, design, implementation, and monitoring of development programs. Thus, when Andean indigenous governments sought new ways to link social-movement organizations with public decision-making bodies in the 1990s, they received enthusiastic support from many development actors.

Before we investigate the variations in institutional innovation in particular municipalities, it is important to understand the enormous impact of the larger legal, political, and economic contexts in each country. We must remember that the most important decisions that affect local living conditions are made in distant national, and even international, capitols (Bebbington 2005: 5; Grindle 2007: 182–3). In the first section I describe the development of decentralization in Ecuador and Bolivia.