Municipalities in Bolivia are administrative divisions of the entire national territory governed by local elections. Municipalities are the third level of administrative divisions, below departments and provinces. Some of the provinces consist of only one municipality. In these cases the municipalities are identical to the provinces they belong to. There are 340 municipalities.

History of governance

Municipalities in Bolivia are each led by a mayor, an executive office. Mayors were appointed by the national government from 1878 to 1942 and from 1949 to 1987. Local elections were held under the 1942 municipal code, which was in force until 1991. The 1985 Organic Law of Municipalities restored local elections for mayor and created a legislative body, the municipal council. In 1994, the entire territory of Bolivia was merged into municipalities, where previously only urban areas were organized as municipalities. As an effect of decentralization through the 1994 Law of Popular Participation the number of municipalities in Bolivia has risen from an initial twenty-four (in 1994) to 327 (in 2005), to 337 (at the time of the 2010 elections), to 339. Of the 327 municipalities existing after 2005, 187 are inhabited by a mainly indigenous population; 184 of these are located in the five Andean departments, with the remaining three in Santa Cruz department. New municipalities must have at least 10,000 residents, or 5,000 in the case of border areas.

List of municipalities

The municipalities are as follows ordered by department:

Beni

Cochabamba

Chuquisaca

La Paz

Oruro

Pando

Potosí

Santa Cruz

Tarija