The attempt to classify Bolivia under Evo Morales has yielded a bewildering range of regime labels. While most scholars label it a democracy with adjectives, systematic appraisals of the regime have been scant. This article aims fill this gap by providing a more systematic evaluation, putting special emphasis on features of Bolivia’s electoral playing field. It evaluates the slope of key fields of competition (electoral, legislative, judicial, and mass media), finding abundant evidence that all four were substantively slanted in favor of the incumbent. During the MAS reign, political competition was genuine but fundamentally unfree and unfair, because the ruling party benefited from a truncated supply of electoral candidates; much greater access to finance; a partisan electoral management body; supermajorities in the legislature, used to dispense authoritarian legalism; a captured and weaponized judiciary; and a co-opted mass media ecosystem. Contrary to most extant characterizations, the regime is best categorized as competitive authoritarian.

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莫拉莱斯玻利维亚的竞争威权主义：扭曲竞争的竞技场

将玻利维亚归入埃沃·莫拉莱斯（Evo Morales）的尝试产生了一系列令人眼花缭乱的政权标签。尽管大多数学者用形容词将其称为民主，但对该政权的系统评价却很少。本文旨在通过提供更系统的评估来填补这一空白，特别强调玻利维亚选举竞争环境的特点。它评估了竞争的关键领域（选举、立法、司法和大众媒体）的斜率，发现大量证据表明这四个领域都在实质上倾向于现任者。在 MAS 统治期间，政治竞争是真实的，但从根本上说是不自由和不公平的，因为执政党从选举候选人的供应减少中受益；更多的融资渠道；党派选举管理机构；立法机关的绝对多数，用来散布威权法制主义；一个被俘虏和武器化的司法机构；和增选的大众媒体生态系统。与大多数现存的特征相反，该政权最好归类为竞争性威权主义。