Liberal Democracy, Populism, and Beyond

Liberal Democracy, Populism, and BeyondElite Circulation in Bolivarian Venezuela David J. Myers Populism in Venezuela. By Ryan Brading. New York: Routledge, 2013. Pp. xi + 208. $130.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780415522977. Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela: The Chávez Authoritarian Experiment. By Allan R. Brewer-Carías. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv + 418. $39.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521145572. Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. By Rory Carroll. New York: Penguin, 2013. Pp. 320. $27.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781594204579. Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela. By Sujatha Fernandes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xv + 319. $23.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822346777. Venezuela’s Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Politics. By Kirk A. Hawkins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiii + 290. $80.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780521765039. The Revolution in Venezuela: Social and Political Change under Chávez. Edited by Thomas Ponniah and Jonathan Eastwood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. vi + 338. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780674061385. Hugo Chávez Frías ranks in the first order of transformative leaders to govern in Latin America since World War II. He attacked and dismantled one of the region’s most established liberal democracies then presided over a slide into leftist [End Page 231] “competitive authoritarianism” underpinned by the military. The six volumes reviewed here display some concern with the causes of Venezuelan liberal democracy’s unraveling. The central focus, however, is on two questions: how did Hugo Chávez and his supporters wrest power from the ruling class that governed Venezuela between 1958 and 1998, and how did Chávez make competitive authoritarian rules of the political game the new normal? One useful theoretical lens to employ in answering those questions is the elite circulation paradigm pioneered by Gaetano Mosca and refined by sociologists Mattei Dogan and John Higley. The paradigm argues that when elites have relative autonomy, their decision making is of the highest importance and we should focus on elite activities when describing and explaining political change.1 Over the fifteen years that he controlled Venezuela, Chávez acted as a charismatic leader. He dominated his inner circle, whose members were expected to support enthusiastically whatever policy he proposed and have remained unified and autonomous since Chávez’s passing on March 3, 2013. Thus, conditions in Venezuela between 1998 and early 2014 are precisely the ones that advocates of elite circulation view as favoring the use of their model. Nevertheless, paradigms such as rational choice, class conflict, institutionalism, and political culture also have demonstrated capabilities for explaining complex processes and also are brought to bear in exploring what the volumes under review have to offer. What follows is an examination of how the volumes under review portray both agency and structural conditions that contributed to displacing liberal democratic elites (1998 to 2006) and normalizing Bolivarian dominance in Venezuela (2006 to 2013).2 agency in the displacement of liberal democratic elites Support for Venezuelan liberal democrats was eroding when Hugo Chávez Frías burst on the political scene as architect of the unsuccessful 1992 military golpe de estado (coup d’état). In 1994, after President Rafael Caldera pardoned Chávez and released him from prison, the newly emancipated lieutenant colonel formed the MVR (Movimiento de la Quinta República, Fifth Republic Movement), an organization designed to compete in the electoral area. Chávez’s electioneering gave priority to severing the bonds that linked the urban poor, the impoverished middle class, and the established political parties Democratic Action (AD, Acción Democrática) and the Social Christians (COPEI, Comité de Organización Electoral Independiente). As has been recounted many times, Chávez won the 1998 presidential election and proceeded to eclipse AD and COPEI. Liberal democrats resisted at every juncture. After the unsuccessful coup of April 2002 they staged mass demonstrations to force the president from office. They also compelled Chávez to stage a recall election that took place during [End Page 232] August 2004. The failure of these efforts led liberal democrats to abandon the electoral area and boycott the October 2005 elections for the National Assembly. This ill-conceived tactic eliminated much of their influence

Art · Authoritarianism · Democracy · Economic history · Elite · Humanities · Latin Americans · Left-wing politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Power (physics) · Sociology · Cultural and political discourse analysis · History · Law · Political Theory and Democracy · Politics and Society in Latin America

• Class Strategies in Chavista Venezuela

  Open Access•Steve Ellner•Latin American Perspectives•2019

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• Elites, crises, and the origins of regimes

  John Higley, Mattei Dogan•Elites, crises, and the origins…•1998

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• The ruling class

  Gaetano Mosca•The ruling class•1960

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• Class, Status and Power

  Wilbert E Moore, Reinhard Bendix et al.•American Sociological Review•1954

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