Bolivia's Rebellious Veep
The Vice Presidency Unbound
In Bolivia Vice President Edmand Lara is attacking President Rodrigo Paz. The surprise isn’t that this happened, but that it happened so soon. The administration has only been in office for two weeks!
With inflation over 20%, Bolivia is beset with severe economic problems, as well as the problems of crime and corruption that are unfortunately endemic in much of Latin America. After about two decades of the Movement for Socialism, founded by Evo Morales, voters selected a center-right candidate in Paz. But what probably put Paz over the top in the runoff was his running mate, Lara, a former police captain who became famous making TikToks about police corruption.
Social media figures do not always fit into regular politics (as Americans have learned over the past decade). During the campaign, with voters hungry for reform but afraid of the return of the traditional elites, Lara stated:
I’m the guarantee. If Rodrigo Paz goes astray, I’ll set him straight. If he refuses, other measures will have to be taken.
My go-to for all things Latin America, James Bosworth noted at the time that this was not a great sign for a successful Paz-Lara administration. As a student of the vice presidency I wholeheartedly agreed.
Well, the break has come to pass. According to Casey Cagley’s excellent The Bolivia Brief, Vice President Lara opposed a number of the President’s appointees to the cabinet who represented the “old caste.” Lara had little success placing his own allies in key spots. Lara’s candidate for Justice Minister had some old legal troubles and was removed from office. The Ministry of the Presidency (equivalent to the White House Chief of Staff) went to José Luis Lupo, who had been the VP candidate for Samuel Doria Medina, a business magnate who had finished third in the elections and didn’t advance to the run-off. Then President Paz appointed a Vice Minister for Legislative Coordination. This domain is usually the prerogative of the VP, who in Bolivia is the president of the combined Legislative Assembly (each house has its own president.) There was a street protest by Lara’s supporters and on TikTok, Lara called the President a liar and cynic.
Implications of Institutional Decay
Cagley has more details on this feud and its potential fallout. I don’t know Bolivian politics, but I’ll make a few general observations. In the U.S. feuds between the President and VP do not go well for the VP. The formal powers of the presidency give the president every advantage. Vice presidents can try to go to the public or to their factions, but this amounts to little in the face of presidential power. But that may not be how things play out in Bolivia, where institutions are less established and the backdrop of economic problems gives the administration little margin for error.
As I’ve written elsewhere, looking to the governments of Latin America may provide guidance as to where the U.S. is headed as our own institutions decay. Very few of our vice presidents had sufficient standing to be a real challenge to the president.1 For most of American history the vice presidency was an inconsequential office pawned off to some party figure in pursuit of a specific electoral gain. As the vice presidency has grown in stature, presidential nominees have been careful in who they choose—ensuring that they won’t be overshadowed and the pick will be loyal. But one lesson we are learning in the United States is that institutional checks can be overrun by a person who simply disregards all the rules. Imagine a popular VP who doesn’t care what the president does to them and flies around the country (and world) undermining the administration. Improbable, maybe. Impossible—not at all. This President-VP feud in Bolivia bears watching.
Probably the closest case was during the administration of John Adams. His political rival Thomas Jefferson was vice president. Adams sought to work with Jefferson to resolve some of the new nation’s challenges. Jefferson demurred, kept his distance, and prepared for the next election. Jefferson had determined that by the end of his first term the nation’s problems would be so great that voters would turn to him to replace Adams. He was right.