Table Of ContentContributions to Political Science
Miguel Angel Latouche
Wolfgang Muno
Alexandra Gericke Editors
Venezuela –
Dimensions
of the Crisis
A Perspective on Democratic Backsliding
Contributions to Political Science
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· ·
Miguel Angel Latouche Wolfgang Muno
Alexandra Gericke
Editors
Venezuela – Dimensions
of the Crisis
A Perspective on Democratic Backsliding
Editors
Miguel Angel Latouche Wolfgang Muno
Political and Administrative Sciences Political and Administrative Sciences
University of Rostock University of Rostock
Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Germany Germany
Alexandra Gericke
Political and Administrative Sciences
University of Rostock
Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Germany
ISSN 2198-7289 ISSN 2198-7297 (electronic)
Contributions to Political Science
ISBN 978-3-031-21888-0 ISBN 978-3-031-21889-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21889-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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Contents
Introduction: Venezuela—Dimensions of the Crisis ................... 1
Miguel Angel Latouche and Alexandra Gericke
History and Theory
Can an Evolutionary Order Be Schizophrenic? Reading
Venezuelan Politics from an Institutionalist Perspective ............... 11
Miguel Angel Latouche
Ideological Aspects of Venezuela’s Current Divide .................... 27
Guillermo T. Aveledo
The Quest for Democracy: Venezuela in the Twentieth
and Twentyfirst Centuries .......................................... 37
Wolfgang Muno and Thomas Kestler
Domestic Dimensions of The Crisis: Actors, Parties and Problems
Multiple Crises of the Venezuelan Party System ...................... 65
Héctor Briceño
Discretionality and Disarticulation in the Venezuelan Public
Administration .................................................... 83
Julia Alcibiades
Venezuela: The Military Factor ..................................... 117
Miguel Angel Latouche
International and Regional Dimensions of the Crisis
The Role of the EU in the Venezuelan Conflict: Why Did
Democracy Promotion Fail? ........................................ 129
Susanne Gratius
v
vi Contents
From Monroe to Bolívar and Back? US-Venezuela Relations .......... 145
Alexander Brand and Wolfgang Muno
Venezuela, Cuba and United States: Power and Geopolitics
in the Great Caribbean ............................................ 169
Ernesto Domínguez López
Difficult but Necessary: Venezuela-Colombia Relations
Throughout Time—A Historical Depiction of Two Specially
Connected Neighbors .............................................. 197
Alexandra Gericke
Conclusions: Dimensions of the Crisis and Future Prospects ........... 219
Miguel Angel Latouche and Alexandra Gericke
Introduction: Venezuela—Dimensions
of the Crisis
Miguel Angel Latouche and Alexandra Gericke
The word crisis gives us the idea of a process of transformation and change of a
structural nature. It is, if you will, a transition from one initial state to the next, a
process in which something ceases to exist as such and transforms its nature to become
something else. In general, these are processes of adjustment to reality, which are full
of uncertainty. During a crisis, it becomes difficult to make long-term forecasts. Crises
are complex situations that tend to be unstable while reality becomes blurred. Crises
take the form of a labyrinth: the paths are multiple, and it is not always easy to find the
way out. Sometimes a crisis presents itself as an explosion—a rupture that quickly
begins to heal. Occasionally and perhaps most problematically, a crisis becomes
a permanent situation. Every crisis implies a rupture of an equilibrium. When we
speak of a sociopolitical crisis, we refer to the rupture of collective agreements and
to the absence of a “normative normality,” which would allow the construction of a
more or less coherent institutional order. In most cases, there is a fracture of society
along with a moral breakdown affecting social organization and customs, among
other issues. Crises always end up distorting public conversation, thus hindering
the possibility of reassembling the political game and constituting mechanisms that
allow the construction of new agreements for peaceful and democratic coexistence.
We have chosen the idea of crisis as the best way to characterize the political and
social situation in Venezuela at the present time and therefore dedicated Rostock’s
annual Latin America Day conference, “ROLAT,” which took place in April 2022, to
discuss and analyze the different dimensions of the long-standing crisis in Venezuela.
Over two days, numerous academics and regional experts came together to exchange
views on the current problems affecting the country.
B
M. A. Latouche · A. Gericke ( )
Department of Comparative Politics, University of Rostock, Ulmenstraße 69, 18057 Rostock,
Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
M. A. Latouche
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1
M. A. Latouche et al. (eds.), Venezuela – Dimensions of the Crisis,
Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21889-7_1
2 M.A.LatoucheandA.Gericke
Among the topics discussed was populism in the military and the accompanying
civilian control of the Armed Forces. Debates also included problems in Venezuelan
public administration, the ideological foundations of the division, challenges facing
the opposition parties, and the crisis of the Venezuelan party system in general. There
were additional insights on the topics of the social impact of the predatory state, the
search for the lost equilibrium, and Venezuela’s oil policy. Another complex of topics
revolved around Venezuela’s diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia, the
USA, the EU, and Cuba, among others. Discussions culminated in a virtual panel
discussion during which all speakers addressed the question of whether democracy
in Venezuela is (still) possible.
The present book seeks to summarize the findings of the ROLAT conference. It
touches upon historical and theoretical facts surrounding the case of Venezuela. It
also talks about the parties and actors that play decisive roles in the conflict, as well
as the role of the military, problems in the public administration and the ideological
origin of the split. It furthermore discusses the challenges facing the party system,
Venezuela’s oil policy as well as international and regional aspects.
The present multilayered case study of Venezuela is complicated and has no claim
to be complete. It can merely be viewed as an attempt to understand Venezuela’s
current situation as an incentive for a possible next step, which could provide solutions
toward a democratic transition.
Venezuela’s crisis has been long. Its first symptoms were visible in the 1980s
when decreasing oil prices and public debt made the inefficiency of an oil-dependent
economic model evident. The definitive breakdown of Venezuela’s representative
democracy dates to 1998 with Hugo Chávez taking power and resulting in a process
of “normative ruptures” that lasted decades—a fact that has already been recognized
in multiple academic works of the 1980s and 1990s while being criticized by the
public (see also chapter by Wolfgang Muno and Thomas Kestler).
The absence of a “normative normality” was caused by the collapse of the collec-
tive agreement, which had allowed the establishment and stabilization of democracy
after the end of Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship. The Punto Fijo pact—signed
in 1958 between the Democratic Action, Copei, and URD political parties—was
an agreement for democratic governability, including respect for electoral results.
It implied the establishment of a minimum governmental program, the defense of
constitutionality, and the constitution of a government of national unity: the Demo-
cratic Political Program (DPP, Punto Fijo, 1958–1998), allowed the construction of a
representative democracy and its stabilization. During this period, a series of subpro-
grams were instituted that had a direct impact on improving the living conditions
of the population. The agrarian reform, for example, allowed the redistribution of
land ownership. At the same time, important industrial projects were developed, as
well as literacy programs, and expansion of school and health coverage. All of this
allowed the stabilization of the Venezuelan society at least until the 1980s, when
the first symptoms of the crisis appeared and became terminal toward the end of the
1990s.
When the goals of the DPP were achieved at the end of the 1950s, society had
developed to the point that the illiterate, rural, and sick Venezuelan population had
Introduction:Venezuela—DimensionsoftheCrisis 3
Fig. 1 Social evolution and Political Program, own elaboration
been transformed and no longer identified with the foundations of the political
program, making its legitimacy decrease. The situation culminated in the Venezuelan
civil society going beyond the limits of the program (see arrows in Fig. 1), which
consequently generated an institutional rupture, seen in the social overflow of 1989,
the so-called Caracazo, and in the attempted coups of 1992.
The “last great civic speech” in Venezuelan democratic history took place on
January 23, 1998, during a session of the National Congress. Representatives of the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches, along with the diplomatic corps,
met to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of representative
democracy and the fall of the last military dictatorship of the twentieth century. Luis
Castro Leiva, an esteemed intellectual and professor at the Central University of
Venezuela, revealed in his speech the various dimensions of the historical moment
that the republic was experiencing and the challenges of rebuilding democracy and
directing it toward the future. With deep republican anguish, Castro Leiva spoke
about the dilemmas associated with the “fateful hour” that had started to overshadow
Venezuela, namely the problems faced by the democratic institutions and the need to
rescue the “republican spirit” that had guided the founders of the democratic project.
But the beginning of the crisis could no longer be averted: the events that gave
way to Venezuela’s authoritarian transition—represented by the coming to power of
Hugo Chavez, the establishment of a populist government, and the “hybridization”
of the political system—were not happening by chance. At that historical moment,
there was a concrete reality that favored the coming to power of the so-called “Boli-
varian Revolution,” which led to a long-lasting multidimensional crisis, which has
determined the lives of Venezuelans since at least the 1980s.
Without ceasing to recognize the achievements of the democratic system, Castro
Leiva raised his voice as a citizen to warn his people against the deep crisis that the
country was facing. His discourse talked about the need of rectifying the course,
of recognizing the evils that inhabited the republic, of rethinking the dimension
and structure of the political system through a new foundational pact that precisely
recognized the multiplicity of interests, world views and aspirations that were at
play in Venezuela at the time. It was a call to put aside the rebellious adventure, to
