The Liberals constituted the primary opposition to the Conservatives from 1884 to 1899 and ruled continuously from 1899 to 1920 after taking power in the Federal War.
The Liberals remained intermittently influential and electorally competitive until the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, and it finally lost its legal party status in 1979, during the democratic transition.
When the party took power in 1899, it moved the base of the presidency and the Congress to La Paz, which became the de facto capital city.
[2] For the 1966 elections, the Liberal Party was a component of the Democratic Institutionalist Alliance, with the PURS's Enrique Hertzog as the coalition's presidential candidate and the PL's leader, Eduardo Montes, as his running mate.
On 29 April 1979, the Electoral Court announced that the PL and sixteen other parties had not met the necessary prerequisites to be allowed ballot access, rendering them effectively defunct.