The Constituent Assembly that founded Bolivia in 1825 wrote the nation's first constitution establishing a centralized government with executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Based on the United States Constitution and borrowing a few premises from the French Republic, the first charter adopted liberal and representative democracy granting the congress autonomy and policy-making prerogatives.
[31] On November 26, 1826, the Bolivarian constitution, written in Lima by the liberator Simón Bolívar Palacio, replaced the original document and instituted a fourfold separation of powers among a lifetime presidency, an independent judiciary, a tricameral congress, and an electoral body.
As a result, the franchise was extended only to those literate in Spanish who either possessed property then worth 400 bolivianos or engaged in an art, in a science, or in some other remunerative position.
Bolívar also feared that rival elite factions would wage battle against each other for control over the new nation and became convinced that the best way to prevent instability and chaos was to institutionalize a strong, centralized, and lifetime presidency.
[31] Under the short-lived Peru-Bolivian Confederation of 1836–39, Santa Cruz promulgated a new constitution that basically applied the principles of the 1831 charter to the alliance.
[31] For the next forty-two years, Bolivia was subjected to the whims of caudillos who dictated constitutional charters almost as regularly as changes of government occurred.
Aided by the failure of Bolivia's armed forces in the war effort, this new elite was able to design a new civilian regime of "order and progress.
During this period, Bolivia achieved a functioning constitutional order complete with political parties, interest groups, and an active legislature.
Specifically, congressional oversight prerogatives over executive behavior were introduced by law in 1884 when Bolivia emerged from the War of the Pacific.
Under Colonel Germán Busch Becerra (1937–39), a constituent assembly approved reforms in 1938 that were to have a lasting and profound impact on Bolivian society.
The labor provision helped establish the basis for political parties by allowing the formation of miners' and peasants' unions that eventually played central roles in the 1952 Revolution.
For example, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario—MNR) espoused a broad multiclass alliance of workers, peasants, and middle-class elements to do battle with the antinational forces of the mining oligarchy and its foreign allies.
Factional disputes within the MNR, rooted in demands for access to state employment, undermined the party's capacity to carry out further reforms.
Although the Constitution of 1967 recognized Roman Catholicism as the official state religion, it also guaranteed to all faiths the right to worship publicly.
The Constitution of 1967 became known to most Bolivians only in the 1980s because, for all practical purposes, it was in effect only until 1969 when a coup by General Alfredo Ovando Candia (copresident, May 1965-January 1966, and president, January–August 1966 and 1969–70) overthrew the civilian regime.
[31] Bolivia's most recent Constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly, an elected body that met in Sucre and Oruro from 6 August 2006 to 9 December 2007.