Will Bolivian president Rodrigo Paz Pereira remain in power through the end of 2026?

TL;DR

I estimate an 81% chance that Rodrigo Paz Pereira remains president of Bolivia continuously through 31 December 2026. Paz has just survived the most dangerous phase of the May-June blockade crisis: roads were reopened, the legislature ratified his emergency decree, and the police and armed forces did not defect. The main remaining NO path is a second national blockade tied to fuel shortages, devaluation, and IMF politics that triggers elite or security-force abandonment.

Context

Rodrigo Paz Pereira is the incumbent president on Bolivia's official presidency page, which says he assumed office on 8 November 2025 (Presidencia de Bolivia). The electoral authority proclaimed the Paz-Edmand Lara ticket after the 19 October 2025 runoff with 3,519,534 valid votes, or 54.96%, against Jorge Quiroga's 2,884,661 votes, or 45.04%; the coverage is the official 2025 runoff count with 100% of actas processed and the source vintage is the Tribunal Supremo Electoral notice of 27 October 2025 (OEP Fuente Directa).

The question now has about 180 days left. The May-June 2026 crisis was severe: protests and road blockades demanded Paz's resignation, isolated La Paz and other cities, caused food, fuel, medicine, and oxygen shortages, and led to cabinet resignations (El País, 3 Jun 2026; AP, 27 May 2026). By late June, Paz had signed an agreement with the COB, declared a state of exception, received legislative approval, and reopened the roads; the crisis is no longer acute, but fuel lines and economic anger remain (El País, 23 Jun 2026; El País, 2 Jul 2026).

Evidence

The historical backbone is Bolivia's unusually high democratic-era early-exit rate. I count the exposure window from the democratic transition on 10 October 1982 to Paz's inauguration on 8 November 2025, or about 43.1 presidential-years, using current public chronology as of 4 July 2026. I count five early or abnormal exits before Paz: Siles Zuazo's crisis-shortened term, Banzer's health resignation, Sánchez de Lozada's 2003 protest-forced resignation, Mesa's 2005 protest-forced resignation, and Morales's 2019 resignation after protests and security-force pressure. That gives a crude all-cause early-exit hazard of 5 / 43.1 = 11.6% per presidential-year, or about 5.6% over the remaining half-year; the strict protest-forced count is 3 / 43.1 = 7.0% per year, or about 3.4% over six months. Paz is not in a normal half-year, so I treat those as a floor, not the forecast.

The analogues that matter are 2003, 2005, and 2019. Presidents fell when street pressure joined with elite or security-force abandonment. In 2003, Sánchez de Lozada resigned after key coalition allies abandoned him and roughly 70 people died in police crackdowns during mass protests (IPS, 17 Oct 2003). In 2019, Morales resigned after weeks of election protests, an OAS report, police unrest, and the military calling for him to step down (Time, 11 Nov 2019). Paz's June 2026 crisis had blockades and resignation demands, but it did not have the decisive collapse signal: no public police mutiny, no military recommendation that he resign, and no legislative replacement coalition.

The current institutional evidence favors survival. Bolivia's constitution says a president is replaced by the vice president, then the Senate president, then the Chamber of Deputies president, and Article 170 lists death, resignation to the Assembly, definitive absence or impediment, final criminal sentence, and recall as ways the mandate ends (Bolivian Constitution, Articles 169-170). A recall cannot be requested until at least half the elected term has elapsed, so it is outside 2026 for a president sworn in on 8 November 2025 (Bolivian Constitution, Article 240). Paz's PDC is short of a chamber majority but is the largest bloc, with 16 senators and 49 deputies in the official 2025 legislative allocation; MAS was reduced to a marginal legislative presence (OEP Fuente Directa). More revealing, the Assembly backed Decree 5636, the state of exception, by more than two-thirds of those present on 21 June 2026, even though Vice President Lara opposed the decree and left the session (La Razón, 21 Jun 2026; El Deber, 21 Jun 2026). External diplomatic signals also favor continuity: the OAS General Secretariat reaffirmed support for Bolivia's elected leadership on 21 June and said it would deploy fact-finding and political missions, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly backed Bolivia's legitimate constitutional government on 20 May (OAS, 21 Jun 2026; EFE, 20 May 2026).

The protest evidence also now points to de-escalation, not immediate collapse. Al Jazeera and Reuters reported on 21 June that authorities said there were no active national road blockades after the emergency decree, while AP the same day reported that blockades were suspended across much of the country but still present in parts of Cochabamba (Al Jazeera/Reuters, 21 Jun 2026; AP, 21 Jun 2026). El País reported on 23 June that Bolivia's road authority said the country's roads were open after more than 50 days of blockades, and that police and armed forces mostly encountered empty barricades rather than resistance (El País, 23 Jun 2026). On 3 July, La Razón reported Paz speaking publicly in Tarija and claiming the emergency decree reopened roads without deaths caused by the security operation, while also referring to 22 deaths caused by the blockades themselves (La Razón, 3 Jul 2026). I read the inconsistent death counts across sources as measurement and attribution differences, not as a contradiction about the direction of travel.

The best quantitative protest-violence guardrail is weak but useful. ACLED/HDX political-violence data, coverage January 2025 through June 2026, N=18 country-month observations, vintage retrieved 4 July 2026, shows 155 political-violence events and 39 fatalities, with a decreasing trend and June 2026 at 3 events and 0 fatalities (ACLED data portal; HDX ACLED organization). This does not count ordinary demonstrations and road blockades well, so I use it only to reject a civil-war or armed-insurgency interpretation of the crisis.

The main reason not to go above the low 80s is the economy. The World Bank's June 2026 Global Economic Prospects forecast Bolivia's real GDP growth at about -3.2% in 2026, an annual real GDP projection published on 16 June 2026 (World Bank GEP, Jun 2026). Bolivia's INE reported on 3 July 2026 that the June 2026 CPI rose 2.15% month-on-month, with first-half inflation at 4.82% and 12-month inflation at 9.23%; this is an official monthly CPI release, not a forecast (INE, 3 Jul 2026). Reuters reported on 26 June that Bolivia ended a 15-year dollar peg and adopted a flexible exchange-rate system, with the official rate moving to 9.73 bolivianos per dollar, about a 30% devaluation from the prior buy rate, while seeking IMF-supported financing of at least US$2.5 billion and possibly around US$3 billion (Reuters via MarketScreener, 26 Jun 2026). El País reported on 2 July that Bolivians still faced fuel queues of up to four hours, 70% of heavy-cargo vehicles were waiting for diesel, and the government opened private fuel imports and sales at market prices through Decree 5644 (El País, 2 Jul 2026).

My forecast is a scenario tree, not a mechanical average of the preceding facts. The main uncertainty is whether the next national stress point comes after the 90-day state of exception, which began on 20 June 2026 and can last up to 90 days under the decree reported by La Razón, while the constitution requires legislative approval within 72 hours and bars a second state of exception within a year unless the legislature authorizes it (La Razón, 21 Jun 2026; Bolivian Constitution, Articles 137-140).

What's non-obvious

The obvious read is that a president facing 50-plus days of blockades and resignation chants is close to falling. The better read is that the June crisis was also a stress test, and Paz passed the specific test that has removed Bolivian presidents before: the security forces followed orders, the legislature ratified the emergency decree, the COB deal split the protest coalition, and the roads reopened without a massacre during the clearing operation (El País, 23 Jun 2026; La Razón, 21 Jun 2026). That is why I am above the raw Bolivia base rate but below a crisis-panic NO forecast.

The underpriced risk is not formal impeachment. It is a September-October replay in which fuel lines, market-price imports, devaluation pass-through, or IMF conditions reunite labor, campesino, miner, transport, and Morales-aligned networks. Vice President Edmand Lara also matters because he opposed the emergency decree and has had public tension with Paz since the first weeks of the administration; if Lara becomes an open succession pole, the risk changes faster than ordinary protest headlines imply (El Deber, 21 Jun 2026; EFE, 26 Nov 2025).

Limitations

The largest gap is private intent inside the police, armed forces, vice presidency, and governing coalition. Public behavior in June showed compliance with Paz's orders, but public behavior is not the same as loyalty under a second high-casualty confrontation.

The second gap is protest measurement. The ACLED series I could use is political violence, not a blockade or demonstration series, and the key Bolivian tactic is nonviolent territorial obstruction. I therefore weight AP, Reuters, El País, La Razón, OEP, INE, and constitutional sources more heavily than the conflict-event count for the main forecast.

The third gap is economic pass-through. The June CPI release predates the full effects of the 26 June exchange-rate shift and the 2 July private fuel-import decree, so July-August inflation, fuel availability, and IMF-program terms could move the forecast meaningfully. My sensitivity range is roughly 73% to 87% YES: the low end if a new national blockade forms with visible police or military hesitation, and the high end if fuel queues ease and the state of exception expires without a renewed national protest wave.