From Chavismo to a democratic left in Venezuela

Antonio Lecuna

No 9, Past Working Papers from Universidad del Desarrollo, School of Business and Economics

Abstract: Venezuela’s political institutions have mutated from a subsidised coalition that almost privatised the oil industry to a populist nationalism that is polarising society to the brink of civil war. In this paper, I examine chavismo in Venezuela as a new and unusual revelatory phenomenon and the most extreme case of leftwing populism in Latin America. The within-case analysis addresses the extreme polarisation of the political landscape and the consolidation of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Political Party of Venezuela, or PSUV) as a united leftwing redistributive party. The conclusions suggest that the PSUV would need to evolve into an institutionalised phenomenon –beyond the nominal leader– with a clear division of power and strong internal debate, and the diverse opposition would need to unite under one political organisation with a defined ideology that is more relevant than the single bonding effect of removing Chávez.

Keywords: Institutions; economic development; territorial development; Venezuela; public policy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L38 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2014-12, Revised 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Dissent, 60(3), 2013, pages 26-28 [DOI: 10.1353/dss.2013.0067].

Downloads: (external link)
http://repositorio.udd.cl/bitstream/handle/11447/59/pwp09.pdf?sequence=1 First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dsr:pastwp:09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Past Working Papers from Universidad del Desarrollo, School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean Sepulveda ().