The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela

Introduction

Introduction Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers The unraveling of an apparently consolidated representative democratic regime poses new theoretical challenges for comparative politics. Early literature on democratic transition and consolidation focused on identifying the conditions and paths by which those transitions would ‘‘consolidate’’ into institutionalized liberal democracies. More recently, scholars have questioned the notion of consolidation and emphasized instead the need to measure the quality of democracy, and they have further attempted to delineate important subtypes of democratic and quasi-democratic regimes (Collier and Levitsky, 1997). These e√orts have led scholars to take a second look at political regimes that are not fully democratic and liberal but which have ceased to be authoritarian and which exhibit some democratic characteristics. Such regimes have been characterized as ‘‘hybrid’’ (Hartlyn, 2002) and placed in a ‘‘gray zone’’ between liberal democracy and outright dictatorship (Carothers, 2002; Myers and McCoy , 2003). Political regimes in this gray zone may, of course, evolve into liberal democracies. On the other hand, they may become institutionalized in the gray zone. Carothers (2002) recognizes two kinds of gray zone regimes which 2 Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers appear with some frequency in the developing world. One, the ‘‘feckless democracy ,’’ is dominated by unresponsive hierarchical political parties. It allows for fair elections and limited civil liberties, but its policy outputs are unresponsive to mass demands. A second common variety, the ‘‘dominant power system ,’’ usually has some kind of electoral base, but elections are not fair, and there are severe restrictions on political liberties. Carothers views Venezuela’s Punto Fijo democracy, especially as it functioned in the 1990s, as a ‘‘feckless democracy.’’ Other social scientists have identified alternative types of hybrid regimes which may be stable for significant periods of time and which do not represent a movement along the continuum of democratization. These include electoral authoritarianism (Schedler, 2002); competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way, 2002); hybrid regimes (Diamond, 2002); delegative democracies (O’Donnell, 1994); limited pluralism (Gil Yepes, 1978); illiberal democracies (Zakaria, 1997); twilight zone democracies (Diamond, 1999); and exclusionary democracies (Remmer, 1985–86). However, there has been little progress in understanding how these regimes become institutionalized or how stable they are. In other words, we still lack a theory of change from one of these hybrid, or gray zone, political regime subtypes to another. The demise of Venezuela’s Punto Fijo democracy did not signal the end of democracy per se but of one variant of limited democracy which lasted over a forty-year period. The demise of that regime di√ers from the regime ruptures represented by the twentieth-century military coups and violent revolutions and from the political instability leading to frequent government and constitutional changes. The evidence suggests that the unraveling of representative (though limited) democracy in Venezuela and the transition to a more hybrid regime (one that combines elements of pluralism and authoritarianism, of representative and direct democracy, and of capitalism and statism) are charting a previously unobserved path of political change. The rise of Venezuela’s Fifth (Bolivarian) Republic under Hugo Chávez Frías raises theoretical challenges for comparative politics. Does it o√er a new and more responsive variant of democracy—one that, as its proponents claim, favors politics that are direct, participatory, and less prone to corruption? Or is it a new incarnation of civic-military populism which updates the tenets of Juan Perón’s Justicialismo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s New National Ideal? Finally, regardless how scholars describe what has occurred in Venezuela, does the new political regime herald a future direction for Latin America? Introduction 3 This volume views Venezuela since the ‘‘Black Friday’’ currency devaluation of 1983 as an example of political regime change within the gray zone. It examines the unraveling of a long-lived limited democracy—the Punto Fijo regime of 1958–98∞—and the rise of another regime type. The emerging regime type, as yet incompletely defined, shares many characteristics with Punto Fijo. In both, political elites operate in small circles, but they reach out on a limited basis to supportive economic and cultural elites. Decision making is centralized in each. Nevertheless, Fifth Republic Venezuela, when all is said and done, is less open and less pluralistic than its predecessor. Decision making within it relies heavily on one person—President Hugo Chávez. The authors of this book argue that both regimes lie within the...