Bureaucracy as a disciplinary power

This chapter looks at the articulations between government and discipline in a state bureaucracy that is in the process of change. It examines how bureaucracy as a disciplinary power functions when it is challenged by discourses of decolonization. I argue that the MAS’s transformational agenda faces severe challenges, as indigenous policy formations collide with the existing bureaucratic-institutional structures of the Bolivian nation-state. I also suggest that the clash would seem to indicate an intention on the part of Bolivian state bureaucracy and its colonial and neoliberal roots to convert indigenous peoples into disciplined masses rather than liberating them as governing pluralities.