From Representative to Participatory Democracy?: Regime Transformation in Venezuela

Abstract

The conditions that had facilitated the institutionalization of the Punto Fijo system during the 1960s had changed in the 1990s in the transition from a world society to highly unequal & urbanized society, the new era of globalization & integration, as well as the parallel backlash to the negative consequences of these developments throughout the world. The examination of the failure of the Punto Fijo democracy to structural changes, both nationally & globally identifies vulnerabilities that led to Chavez crosscutting electoral support. The beginning of the decline of Punto Fijo is pegged at the confluence of structural & institutional factors on Black Friday (February 18, 1983) in the Bolivarian Participatory Democracy (1998-2000) & the course of democracy in the Republic (2001-2003). This work confirms that political economy & political culture variables contribute to explaining political change in Venezuela, & institutional variables are even more central to explaining the unraveling of post-1958 representative democracy. A summarization of the institutional hypotheses generated from this analysis supports the conclusion that the Venezuelan case provides important clues of how apparently institutionalized representative democracies can unravel when stressed, & is a very important lesson for leaders seeking to normalize the political regime and the more recent democracies that took root in the 1980s in many countries of the developing world. References. J. Harwell