Good practice

Bolivia's Electoral Regime Parity and Rotation Law — Ley 026/2010

Bolivia · La Paz · See the Bolivia profile

Bolivia's Law 026/2010 mandates 50/50 parity and rotation in all electoral candidate lists. Women's share in the Plurinational Assembly rose from 14% (2009) to 53% in the lower house and 47% in the upper house by 2020, one of the world's highest.

53%

Women in the lower house (2020)

47%

Women in the upper house (2020)

14%

Baseline women's share (2009)

Details

Maturity: Established
Promoter: Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Bolivia
Period: 2010–present
Keywords: electoral law, gender parity, political representation, legislative bodies, Latin America

Context

Bolivia's Law 026/2010 mandates 50/50 gender parity and rotation on all electoral candidate lists.

Results

Women's share in the Plurinational Assembly rose from 14% in 2009 to 53% in the lower house and 47% in the upper house by 2020, among the highest in the world.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-06-21
Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Bolivia — accessed 2026-06-21
ACE Project — Bolivia Ley 026/2010 Régimen Electoral (full text) — accessed 2026-06-21
International IDEA — Bolivia electoral system and gender quotas database — accessed 2026-06-21
UN Women — Bolivia Strategic Note 2022–2026 — accessed 2026-06-21
SDG16.plus / Pathfinders — Bolivia's 30% gender quota led to world's largest share — accessed 2026-06-21

Quality score: 96/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Observational / pre–post

Top 4% in this catalogue (719 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Transferability / replicability2/3

Bolivia's parity-and-rotation model is cited by International IDEA as a regional reference and influenced similar provisions in Ecuador and Costa Rica; it has less global replication than the Norwegian board quota.

Impact on gender equality1/1

Women's share in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly's lower house rose from 14% (2009) to 53.1% (2014) and 48% (2020), a documented 34–39 percentage-point increase (IPU Parline, UN Women).

Effectiveness1/1

Full legislative parity was achieved in both chambers after the first election cycle under Law 026, meeting the constitutional mandate set by the 2009 Constitution.

Efficiency1/1

Enforcement through electoral list validation by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral achieves compliance at low administrative cost; no additional state funding is required beyond the existing electoral machinery.

Evaluated outcomes1/1

International IDEA Gender Quotas Database, UN Women Strategic Note Bolivia 2022–2026, IPU Parline, and UNDP Country Report provide independent, authoritative outcome data.

Sustainability1/1

Parity levels have been maintained across at least four national electoral cycles (2010, 2014, 2019, 2020), demonstrating that the mechanism is institutionally durable.

Achievement / evidence1/1

In 2020, Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies was 48% female and the Senate 56% female, placing Bolivia among the world's highest-ranked countries for women's legislative representation (IPU Parline 2020).

Gender-mainstreaming embedding1/1

Gender equality is embedded in the 2009 Constitution (Arts. 11, 147) and operationalised in Law 026 as a binding structural requirement for all candidate lists, not a voluntary target.

Curator validation1/1

All outcome data sourced from authoritative international bodies: IPU Parline global database, UN Women, UNDP, and International IDEA — independently verifiable.

Cite this

Evidoria. Bolivia's Electoral Regime Parity and Rotation Law — Ley 026/2010. Persistent ID: 20fdece8-c1f6-4f61-a491-f52cc5f01fca.

Export as decision brief (PDF)

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