Suchergebnisse

The challenge for the [Chávez] administration is to devise a way to include dissenting voices and respect minority views while still carrying out the changes desired by the Venezuelan people. The alternative is a tyranny of the majorityin the name of revolutionary change.

While much attention has been paid to state-group relations in the context of abrupt regime change, it is useful to examine the patterns of interest mediation in a stable democracy by looking at state-party-labor relations in Venezuela since 1958. The transition from a primarily party-mediated model of labor incorporation to a model providing a larger role for the state in the mediation of class relations can be demonstrated by tracing the patterns of inducements and constraints on labor, particularly by looking at new institutional, organizational, and juridical forms

Political parties in Venezuela have historically played a mediating role between the state and the working class and also between labor and the private sector. Indeed, the political party system has been widely credited in the literature with sustaining the rather remarkable electoral democracy in Venezuela since 1958. Yet structural change in the world oil market and the Venezuelan economy in the early 1970s combined with the dynamics of past state-labor-party relations have produced an expanded role for the state in the economy as well as in the system of industrial relations. New patterns of interest mediation have emerged that have facilitated the adjustment of the democratic regime to changing political and economic conditions, thus helping to ensure its survival.

In mid-1985, the US Embassy in Caracas stated that "Venezuela appears to have successfully coped with its financial crisis" (US Embassy, 1985). In January 1986, the Wall Street Journal announced thatVenezuela will become the first country in Latin America to sign a debt-refinancing agreement without mediation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its success stands in stark contrast to the situation in another oil-rich nation, Mexico, where the ruling political party has seemed more interested in using the oil wealth to perpetuate the party's power than to secure the country's independence from the IMF (WSJ, 1986).

McCoy, J.: One act in an unfinished drama. - S. 109-123 Kornblith, M.: Elections versus democracy. - S. 124-137