VENEZUELA: Venezuela’s Prospects for Democracy

Teodoro Petkoff argues that Venezuela “combines the anatomy of a democratic regime with the physiology of an authoritarian one” in his CLAS talk covered by graduate student Taylor Boas.

Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela is a hybrid state: it combines the anatomy of a democratic regime with the physiology of an authoritarian one. While possessing democratic institutions such as political parties and labor unions, its actual functioning departs starkly from the democratic ideal. Yet, argued leftist critic Teodoro Petkoff, the narrow defeat of a referendum on constitutional reform in December 2007 thwarted an even more drastic potential outcome, the institution of a de facto totalitarian state.