“What the People Give, They Can Take Away”

Abstract

Provisions for the direct recall of elected representatives before the completion of their terms allow unsatisfied citizens to gather a number of signatures and submit to a vote his or her continuity in office. Following a Latin American trend, it was introduced for the first time in Bolivia with the 2009's Constitution. Since then, according to the regulation, there were two periods in which recall petitions were enabled–2013 and 2018–in which a total of 369 requests were registered at the subnational level. However, despite the number of initiatives, with only one exception (Bolpebra, Pando), none of them achieved a recall election. This chapter explores the reasons explaining the low number of initiatives achieving a vote. The study offers a comparative analysis of institutional designs and an in-depth study of attempts as well as the vote in Bolpedra.