The emergence of a new strategy in Bolivian movements: actor’s dynamics using the Multi-Agent Simulation

• In Event: Social movements and struggles around natural resources

Abstract

How are strategies that lead social movements to success shaped? This paper takes up the Bolivian case to explore how the single-identity strategy was changed to the multiple-identity strategy and which factor affects the emergence of a new strategy most.

As many know, the Bolivian revolution in 1952 succeeded with the single-identity, that is, mineworkers. However, after neoliberal reforms, mineworkers lost their political power and then this strategy had become no longer effective. In the midst of it, in 2000 the unprecedented-scale movement, the Water War, was occurred and resulted in political changes. In Water War, a new strategy was adopted to mobilize people, which is the multiple-identity, uniting peasants, informal workers and indigenous people altogether. Why and how is it changed?

Despite many excellent researches on the Water War, it is not clear which factor most affected the emergence of this new strategy. Previous studies primarily contend failure of single-identity strategy of movement activists and emphasizing citizens’ indigenous identity. Besides, the government actions that stimulated movement activists and citizens have understudied. 

This paper intends to compare the influence of the behavior of movement activists, citizens, and the government, respectively, by using the Multi-Agent Simulation(MAS). MAS is a computational approach to create a virtual society. With a MAS model constructed by fieldwork data, this paper first compares the influence of these factors by recreating Bolivian social movements and then experiments the counterfactual by adding and subtracting each factor to discover which factor most affects the emergence of a new strategy.

Author

• Hiromi Makita, University of Tokyo