The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela

5 Civil Society: Late Bloomers

c h a p t e r f i v e Civil Society Late Bloomers Luis Salamanca The crisis and decline of the political system governed by the parties, which were once the fundamental channels for citizen representation and participation , as well as channels for articulating popular demands, left a vacuum that spurred the politicization of social and cultural actors, such as civil society organizations and the media. These actors have attempted to fill this vacuum not through the implementation of a deliberate strategy but as a side e√ect of the unfolding political dynamic. As the traditional political actors imploded in 1998, civil society organizations and the media became sui generis political actors seeking to influence and direct the public administration, even while not directly competing for power. This chapter examines this turn in the activity of organizations that had previously been occupied by social issues. The Concept of Civil Society The search for a definition of civil society still has not produced a consensus among theorists on how far the concept extends, how it di√ers from the concept of the state, who is part of civil society, how it functions, and whether it should be regulated by the legal system.∞ There is not even agreement on its 94 Luis Salamanca name. In order to provide a more e≈cient conceptual delimitation, a number of authors have suggested new categorizations for specific components of civil society, such as nonprofit sector (Salamon and Anheier, 1999), third sector (Jeréz, 1997), and promotion and social development organizations. Civil society constitutes itself with respect to concrete configurations of dominant political power at each moment (the church, the monarch, the state, or the party) and/or with regard to the modalities whereby these forms of power operate (exclusionary or inclusionary, arbitrary or legal, military or peaceful).≤ Civil society is not a condition intrinsic to the political system but a historical product. It begins to form when sectors excluded from the political realm begin to mobilize in order to influence political decision making, though not to hold power. This mobilization is the least common denominator among definitions of civil society; it makes civil society a dynamic and changing arena whose dynamism shifts according to the open or closed character of the configurations of power at each historical moment.≥ The concept of civil society changes according to the type of relationship which is established between society and political power. Therein lies a good part of its origins in Venezuela, where civil society appears in opposition more to the dominance of the political parties than to the dominance of the state in society. In Venezuela, the concept of civil society has grown since the 1970s, probably as a result of the di√usion of Antonio Gramsci’s writings in political and intellectual circles. Before the seventies, the notion of civil society was not an important element of political discourse in Venezuela. Civil Society during Punto Fijo Democracy Venezuelan civil society during the Punto Fijo period can be characterized as a space of nonparty, nonstate, voluntarily formed, nonprofit, citizen organization which arose outside the interest group and labor union world and whose purpose was to attain better living conditions both for its own members and for other sectors of the population. Civil society as a space of heterogeneous actors arose on the margins of a system of state-society relations established by the Pact of Punto Fijo, which made the political parties the fundamental actors in the democracy just initiated. Social organizations, in particular the workers’ organizations, were assigned secondary roles. This initial experience marked the model of state-society relations which would develop in the Punto Fijo democratic period with two important characteristics. On the one hand, these Civil Society: Late Bloomers 95 relations were channeled and virtually monopolized by the political parties, especially the two largest parties (Acción Democrática [AD; Democratic Action ] and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente: Partido Social Cristiano [COPEI; Committee of Independent Electoral Political Organization : Social Christian Party]), though the minor parties—Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS; Movement toward Socialism) and the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP; Electoral Movement of the People), among the most important —were not excluded from the process. The smaller parties followed the same working logic as the larger ones. Although criticizing and challenging AD andCOPEI,thesmallpartiesusedthesamemethodsandsoughttodisplaceand control the positions held by...