The most important part of this article is its last paragraph: "Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations."<p>With that in mind it is understandable that the rest is a over-generalization that tries to find a one-size-fits-all explanation for political development in various countries all over the world, lashing out at every "bad" guy.<p>For example, Evo Morales is mentioned once and even that in a questionable context - the cited "little respect for any institutions [...] a vibrant private sector" were actually what got him elected in first place - and not by middle class but the dead poor who could not afford tripled rates for water[1] and did not want to sell out their natural resources[2]. Contrary to what the article claims later, this did not lead to economic devastation but to "economic growth [...] higher than at any time in the last 30 years, averaging 4.9 percent".[3]<p>Maybe a disrespect for institutions, esp. when then are called IMF, is not a bad thing after all.<p><pre><code> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_gas_conflict
[3] http://cepr.net/publications/reports/bolivian-economy-during-morales-administration</code></pre>