How can we explain the electoral success of Evo Morales' Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) in 2005 and what are its political consequences? A discursive analysis of MAS highlights that Bolivia's recent political crises involved a process of hegemonic construction of a political identity of "the people" and of an imagined community of the "plurinational" nation by MAS. This hegemonic articulation was a key factor for MAS to become Bolivia's largest political party. It entailed the split of society into two antagonistic poles of "the people" and "the traditional politicians". The latter were made responsible for the design of the existing political system and thus for the long standing grievance of the exclusion of the indigenous peoples. MAS, by contrast, positioned itself as idiosyncratic "political instrument" that acted with one foot inside and the other outside the political institutions owing to its strong links with the social movements. This idiosyncrasy enabled MAS to bridge the previously disconnected spheres of official and extra-institutional politics. It entailed a process of de-institutionalisation of the discredited political system since MAS refused to play by the established rules of the game. However, through the bridging of the two spheres it moved those previously disenchanted with the political system to the centre of the polis. This initiated a process of re-institutionalisation of a "refounded" state with the promise to install adequate institutions uniting Bolivia's "plurinational" diversity. In sum, MAS united all disenfranchised by the status quo into one identity against a common antagonist with the consequence of a dialectic process of de-institutionalisation and reinstitutionalisation. The analysis of the discourse of MAS serves as a mirror for democracy in Bolivia. It reveals the challenge of squaring the rupture with a discredited past and the exclusion of de-legitimised political actors, with the continuity of democracy and with the aim to hegemonically represent society.