Venezuela's Democratic Erosion

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

Hello, and welcome to the Rules of the Games podcast, where it is my job to discuss democratic institutions.

Since Hugo Chávez came to power in the presidential election in 1998, Venezuela has experienced a staggering democratic erosion, with increasing levels of repression. As soon as Chávez assumed office, he initiated the writing of a new constitution through a controversial process that was approved by citizens in two referendums, yet with very low turnout. Many people seemed to be tired of the power play of the old establishment and were vying for change and hence entrusted Chávez with making fundamental amendments to the rules of the game.

With Maryhen Jimenéz I discuss how Venezuela transitioned from a weak democratic system in the 1990s to an authoritarian regime. She walks us not only through major political developments prior to the 1999 constitution, but provides fascinating insights into how Chávez was able to capture and concentrate power while the opposition tried to use institutional and extra-institutional means to regain control of the political process. In particular she shares the findings of her research on the attempts of the opposition to coordinate and join forces to challenge the power of Chávez and later Maduro. Despite a landslide victory of a coordinated opposition movement in the parliamentary elections of 2015, the attempts to restore democracy failed to this day. 

Maryhen Jiménez is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Latin American Centre, and holds a PhD from the Department of Politics and International Relations, both at Oxford University. She was also a visiting researcher at Princeton University, and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico. She worked for the German development cooperation in Peru, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica and the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch in Washington DC. She has published academic articles in Political Studies, Revista de Ciencia Política and Revista Elecciones, but also she regularly contributes reports and blogs reaching a broader audience. 

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the twenty-sixth episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I am always curious to hear your opinion, so just send me an email to [email protected], and please leave a review and share this episode with friends and colleagues.

This is the last episode before the summer break. I’ll be back with new episodes towards the end of August to continue the journey of exploring and learning about the failures and success stories of democratic institutions. 

Also I’d like to recommend another podcast on democracy titled the Democracy Paradox, hosted by Justin Kempf. Every week he discusses a newly published book covering political science, sociology and economics. I enjoy the conversations and it’s a great way to learn about the latest books published in these fields.

For now please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Maryhen Jiménez.

Interview:

Stephan Kyburz: Maryhen Jiménez Morales, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, very happy to have you on the show.

Maryhen Jiménez: Thank you so much for having me Stephan.

Stephan Kyburz: So my first question as always is: what is your first memory of democracy?

Maryhen Jiménez: That is an interesting question. I would say looking back, so when I was a child I was still living in Venezuela until we moved to Germany. When I was nine, I have sort of different memories of what a democracy was. Now obviously looking back when you’re a child, you don’t necessarily think in those terms so I would have probably different memories according to those very different countries. But I would say that growing up in Venezuela, something that my parents really focused on was to try and build a consensus between a decision that my brother had to make and I myself had to make. And one of the very crucial, I would say tough decisions that we were faced with was with the blockbuster movie rental. You remember that!? So back in the days when you could actually go and rent movies. Obviously my parents didn’t want to rent five or six, so there were very early negotiations around movies that we would have to rent together. So I do remember back in Maracay or Valencia in the cities that I lived in, negotiating with my brother. I was at the time probably six or seven, negotiating on a couple of movies that we would rent and even though we most of the time reached a consensus, the process of getting to that consensus wasn’t always effortless, let’s say.

Stephan Kyburz: Did you back then already prefer the more political movies or how do you relate it to democracy?

Maryhen Jiménez: Well, I relate to democracy because I couldn’t impose, I mean let’s say the beauty but the tough part of democracy is that you have to win to lose, right? Democracy is a system where parties lose elections and where losers don’t lose everything so they can co-exist in a system that can mitigate conflicts, right? That’s one way of looking at it. And so what this very simple example tells us is that as children we had to live with the fact that we weren’t going to always get what we wanted but that choosing another movie wasn’t necessarily the end of our Friday evening or even that we didn’t have to get completely upset about what had happened and so you had to live with the decision made by a community – in this example, my brother and I. So I think of this example because it goes beyond you know voting obviously a very different and very classical example of what I remember a democracy to be when I was a child is electing your class representative, right? So it’s a very typical exercise where you elect a representative and the majority, ideally you have a candidate that is voted by a majority of class members and so that person then represents your interests, let’s say in front of the teachers or in a conference and student conferences when you’re older. But so those two examples just stand for two different mechanisms of democracy: one that is more participatory so you choose a representative that then ideally represents your interests and the other example is more of negotiations, trade-offs and I trying to reach a consensus around a decision but particularly also focusing on the looser side of the story. So my brother wasn’t always going to get his favorite movie and I wasn’t going to get always my favorite movie. But so that repeated game where you lose one time but you can win another, it just taught us a lot about life and dealing with accepting the choices of others and accepting that you aren’t always going to win.

Stephan Kyburz: Yes, exactly. So I can understand that very well actually because I have 2 sisters and so I had to negotiate as well and obviously also one time you lose and then the other time you win in the negotiations or you know you’ll find the compromise. And also we had actually in our family like family meetings where everybody had time to say what bothered them and the others had to listen and so that’s a way how we solved problems in the family. So this was almost like an institution, a family democratic institution.

Maryhen Jiménez: It’s great you say that because we also had that. But I remember I mean maybe my parents exaggerated a bit because we were very, very young to have these family assemblies let’s say you know and then we were sort of asked to share what we liked or what we didn’t like or if there was, let’s say, there was a fight they would then call this like little family meeting which sometimes was probably a bit much because you didn’t need the exposure to really crafting an argument. No, you were just upset, you were a child but the process of getting used to these sort of meetings and talking and dealing with the conflict is actually I think that it gave us important insights as to how to resolve conflicts now that ultimately will always arise.

Stephan Kyburz: Yes, exactly. So that’s very interesting that you say that you had a similar and democratic assembly within the family. So it’s good to hear that parents come up with such solutions and I think for us it was great because it was always an interesting evening like it was the only evening when we were allowed to drink Coca-Cola and stuff like that, and we had special food.

Maryhen Jiménez: Well, it’s a good incentive.

Stephan Kyburz: Today, I’d like to talk about Venezuela and Venezuela’s democratic erosion and especially over the last twenty, twenty-five years and this is also your expertise, your research focuses on this period a lot, especially the coordination of the opposition but in general this whole process of democratic erosion. Now I think for the audience, it would be very interesting to  have an overview: when did Venezuela’s democracy peak? What were some of the major events historically that you think were important? And then in the second part we can focus more on some of the events that happened in the last 20 years.

Maryhen Jiménez: Sounds great. Well, it’s a big challenge to talk about Venezuela in a short podcast episode. But let’s try, I’ll give my best also to summarize a bit what happened prior to the rise of Hugo Chávez to power who wins the elections in December 1998 and then starts his first mandate in 1999 and ever since Chavismo has been in power in Venezuela. So just very briefly, Venezuela’s democracy gets first established in 1958, after the fall of the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. And this is important because it’s a crucial decision also made by political elites at the time, crucial figures like [Rafael] Caldera, [Rómulo] Betancourt, and Jóvito Villaba, who signed a pact. So we were talking about negotiation trade-offs and consensus but also pacts. And so Venezuela’s democracy emerges in a way also out of this pact by political elites who understand the need to set some basic rules of the game. And so political elites and parties are fundamental in establishing this democratic system and they understand the need of checks and balances. They understand the need of smooth transition of power, of altering the presidency and also of being a loyal opposition. The sense of not questioning or necessarily trying to bring down the rules of the game, the democratic rules of the game. And this is how with a particular focus on social policies, Venezuela’s democracy begins to grow for over 2 decades. Now, there are obviously many other arguments that we could bring in, but let me just bring in the economy and the oil for a couple of seconds. So the democracy Venezuela is able also to grow because for a long time, there is a boom and so there’s money that can be distributed through social policies and a sort of imperfect but growing welfare system. So political parties see the need also to redistribute among the population at that time – a population that had suffered not only a dictatorship but also poverty and inequality, etc. In a way what happens during the last two decades of the past century is that what Michael Coppedge has called the parties become sort of a victim of their own success, right? Once the rules of the game are established and are let’s say largely unquestioned. Parties lose really touch with, traditional parties like Acción Democrática and Copei, lose touch with their basis and stop sort of investing in strong party building. But also in letting the society participate also through other means. So as oil prices decline as well, inequality and poverty begin to rise, there are a lot of challenges within society that expresses itself in terms of pressuring the political party system. There are also corruption scandals and basically there is the first coup in 1998 [1992?], that follows a really crucial moment in Venezuela’s more recent history at El Caracazo in 1989, protests that are met with massive state violence and so you can see that the political system is unstable already. One because of what I’ve been talking about about the role of political elites and how that changed over time but also because the revenues to distribute were sort of declining. So in that context is where Chávez emerges. And so he then gets convinced by other elites and other peers that actually the way of getting to power is through elections. And ultimately that’s what happens. But why I mention all of this is because there was let’s say a fruitful ground for Chávez’s populist anti-establishment and I would also say quite authoritarian leadership style from the very beginning. And also one characteristic that is crucial and will be crucial throughout, is this personalistic nature. And so as opposed to what elites had been doing during the past four decades, that is consensus building as accepting the rules of the game, negotiations and trade-offs, what we will then see is more of a confrontation, a populist anti-establishment very radical maximalist, and also personalist approach towards political affairs in general. And in this context of a party system collapse of Accion Democratica and Copei, corruption, inequality, poverty, it gives Chávez the spaces to rise. And to be honest what I think is also important is that many actors that had emerged and benefited from the democratic system, also citizens and society in general, that had benefited from the democratic system were now looking to punish those political elites who had lost touch with the needs of the population. So the media for example, gives Chávez a platform to communicate his messages but these messages were already quite loaded at the time, right? Some work that has been done and also from my own work, what I can tell you is that for example, that some economic elites or private sector business media, they were quite interested in trying to bring Chávez to power to punish these elites but also to influence Chávez; to create a new system in which they could win more and lose less in a way and that would imply a completely different political system that wasn’t necessarily based on democratic principles.

Stephan Kyburz: So did they use like his popularity or his anti-establishment views to also gain themselves gain more power because – as I understand – the decades, let’s say the four decades prior to the change of millennium were a consolidation of power of the elites and there was a clear movement in the population that tried to counter this establishment political power, is that right?

Maryhen Jiménez: Well during the last, prior last two decades of last century, you do have really significant changes. For example, La Causa Radical or Movimiento al Socialismo, these are left-leaning parties that emerge regionally, who have had some origins in the guerilla movement or some of its leaders. But then who had ultimately sort of accepted the democratic and institutional path to democracy and to social inclusion and to change. So from, for example, the state of Aragua and state of Bolivar you have these parties emerging and also winning elections. And so this was a major change already in the 1990s, particularly with the decentralization process that starts in Venezuela in 1989. So you have an opening and you have a challenge of these other two traditional parties: Acción Democrática and Copei and these are the demands of the population to participate through different means are partially met. And there are already significant discussions about how to reform the state, how to guarantee a greater representation, a greater participation. Also during Caldera’s last presidential mandate, so this is the one precisely prior to Chávez. And for example, there was already a discussion of whether the constitution should be changed or should not be changed. So there are a lot of demands for change, for inclusion, for transformation. For example, the human rights movement in Venezuela grows during the 1990s particularly based on what we briefly mentioned about the Caracazo. You have groups emerging that are claiming responsibility from the state and the guarantees of democratic principled practices. But also guarantee all the rights that were stipulated in the constitution. So it’s a society that is demanding more space, that is demanding more participation, greater representation at the same time that traditional parties weren’t able to provide that so in a way then Chávez emerges as let’s say the only alternative to these elites who didn’t in time respond. When I say these elites I think that Acción Democrática and Copei probably weren’t quick enough in responding to these challenges. And so in a way, the system and the consensus that had been built around the system crashed – crashed. And so you have this charismatic figure, very polarizing, very confrontational who promises a new start, a new beginning. And one of the elements that he brings in from the very beginning is a new constitution. But rather than giving the constitution a solid democratic basis and as a mechanism for real inclusion, what you see from early on in Chávez’s discourse is that he wants this constitution to redefine the republic, to create a new legal system. And now what we know what ended up happening is that he wanted to create a system in which he and his party or elites affiliated to the government that he would represent would benefit and would always win. And as we know in democratic societies, that’s not the purpose necessarily of constitutions and the rules of the game. So Venezuela transitions from a weak democratic system in the 1990s to different phases of democratic erosion. Or enters a period of democratic backsliding and then you know we could talk about all these different concepts that now political science has developed to try and think better and try to measure more and better what’s going on in these societies. So Venezuela transitions to a hybrid regime, how Larry Diamond has called it or then also more progressively a competitive authoritarian regime, what Levitski and Way have put forward. Or more broadly electoral authoritarianism, a concept coined by Andreas Schedler.

Stephan Kyburz:  Just for the audience to also understand that period of Chavismo. An important step was obviously his presidential election in late 1998 and then he very soon started this constitutional process to write a new constitution and he used a referendum to start this process. So he asked the people whether they wanted to have a new constitution and whether he was allowed to define the electoral system. Was this new constitution already a big part of democratic erosion or was it more a consolidation of Chávez’s power?

Maryhen Jiménez: Yeah, this is a great question because definitely the new constitution represents a crucial and defining moment of the political system that emerged. And we’ve been talking about how Chávez’s polarization and personalistic leadership style, how that mobilized the people but later on actually that also represented an obstacle. Because as we know democracies – and as we’ve established early on in this conversation – is about consensus, also is about mitigating conflicts. It’s about how to deal with conflicts and not to impose necessarily always your point of view and so what we see – we could we could record several podcasts actually on the constitution writing process – because what you see is that from very early on there are procedural problems with calling the constitutional assembly, installing the constitutional assembly with the sort of powers that it took for itself even though it didn’t have any grounds for it. So I would just quickly here refer for example to the work of Brewer-Carias who has studied this in depth and has already written very early on about the authoritarian, illiberal tendencies around this process. But I really wanted to mention this because oftentimes we don’t get into these particulars that are ultimately really crucial. Because what happened from the very beginning is that the constitution process, as I said, had several procedural problems. So for example, Chávez didn’t have a majority in congress, so he needed a mechanism to sort of bypass congress to call for the national constituent assembly given that he could not write a new constitution, he couldn’t call for a constituent assembly without changing the 1961 constitution, which back at the time was still in place. And so because he didn’t have the majority in congress he needed to bypass congress to initiate the constitution writing process. Ultimately he could do that referring to a sentence by the supreme court at the time and called for a consultative referendum. But let’s say that all of this was less than ideal from the very beginning. Then the other part of the story is participation versus abstention. Ideally, you want to have a constitution that has the backup of a sufficient and ideally also big part of society. And what you have from the very beginning is for example in that consultative referendum you have an abstention of 60.2% of the voters. And then you also refer to the proportion of the constituent assembly. So for example to recall: out of the 131 members, 125 were aligned with the government. So you only had actually 6 members who were in the opposition. And so that tells you about the bargaining powers of these different groups within the process. Another part of the story is for example timing. I believe that Ginsburg had measured that the median constitution writing process takes about ten months. And in Venezuela it was a little over 4 months. So it was all very rapidly with an unbalance of actors within the constituent assembly which is also a bit problematic I would say. And so you also have only a participation rate of 54.7% at the time of approving the constitution. And that’s also problematic because it’s only a little over 50% of the population that agrees with the constitution and the constitution in itself afterwards isn’t really seen as legitimate by many political elites. My sense from studying Venezuela now for over ten years systematically is that as of today, maybe there is a broader consensus around the constitution, but obviously there are crucial parts that need amendment: for example, the indefinite reelection, also the role of the military, for example, the 1999 constitution abolishes public funding for political parties, that’s also problematic or out for debate at least. And so there are several figures within the constitution that would need amendment – if Venezuela would initiate a democratization process. But I would say that after two decades of conflict on a political level, there is more consensus now as there used to be back at the time. I would say it’s also important to highlight that it seems to be that there is a consensus around the social cultural environmental dimensions that there are represented in this constitution for example. And that’s something that is particularly important in a context where the country is still going through a complex humanitarian emergency. So having elites or having let’s say a larger proportion of political parties on actors and elites coming together around this idea of guaranteeing the rights that are written down in this constitution in terms of economic access to social social rights, cultural rights, environmental rights is actually a good thing I would say at this point in time.

Stephan Kyburz: So the political opposition is even trying to enforce those rules that are in the constitution and that need to be honored.

Maryhen Jiménez: Exactly! So because when we think about democratic transitions more particularly, we also know from comparative work for example Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo had written about the constraints of the dictatorial past into the democratic present and future, right? So for example, they analyzed through the case of Chile, how the Pinochet constitution conditioned the new democracy that was emerging. And so when we sort of try to answer or make that argument travel to the Venezuelan context, you would have a constitution that needs amendments but that actually has parts of it that can be accepted by political elites for example in terms of social rights, cultural rights, economic rights. What we’ve been talking about. So rather than drafting a new constitution, what you would have to do is more moving towards guaranteeing those rights rather than writing a new constitution. So in a way Venezuela has a good constitutional basis for the access of those rights. So for example, when you, again when you travel to Chile, precisely the discussion that they’re having right now is: well what is the role of the state in guaranteeing those rights rather than not guaranteeing them or not even having them on the constitution. So Venezuela according to the constitution, also to the 1961 constitution, is a un estado social de derecho (a state of social rights). So it combines both the rule of law but also the social aspects of democracy and so that’s already in the text. So what you would have to do is try to establish policies and institutions that are capable of guaranteeing those rights. But the question wouldn’t be around whether you know those rights should not be guaranteed to the population. So actually what you needed to amend is more the dimension of the political parties, the presidential re-election and the role of the military, so sort of curtail the role the military has gained in Venezuela under Chavismo. So but what I find really interesting because we’ve been talking a lot about the constitutions. How the constitution back in 1999 represented sort of a breaking point because it didn’t have the backup of a big proportion of the society, and also was not regarded as a hundred percent legitimate by opposition groups, because they weren’t really represented in that constitution writing process and it represented a challenge and an obstacle to come around that constitution. But over time I think that now political elites also within the opposition have come to accept parts of the constitution and now the discussion has turned more towards how to amend it in those terms that we’ve just talked about.

Stephan Kyburz: That’s super interesting and in your research you have done a lot of work on opposition coordination and I’d be very interested to hear how opposition parties, movements are coordinated, and as you say in your research it depends on repression. So on very low and very high levels of repression, there is less incentive for the opposition to coordinate for various reasons and when you have medium levels of repression then the opposition is more likely to coordinate. Now it seems like that in Venezuela even after the 1999 constitution, which was a problematic process in many ways, as you write, the opposition coordination was not very strong in the beginning after these events. Can you maybe explain a bit why it took so long or what were the problems for the opposition to get more coordination and you also talk about more formal and informal ways of coordinating. I would be very interested to hear how the opposition really reacted to those events.

Maryhen Jiménez: Great. So yes, we’ve talked a little bit about party system collapse, and the sort of lack of legitimacy and credibility, and capacity to represent the society in the past century, which then creates a path forward for Chávez. So when we talk about this, we need to certainly take into account that sort of inherited weakness from the past. That obviously goes on into the period of Chavismo. So political parties were in a really tough situation because they weren’t only now dealing with this inherited weakness but also with very confrontational, radical discourses from the presidency now headed by Chávez. And also he would talk about how he would weep the floor of political parties, how they needed to disappear. So it’s a very aggressive discourse towards Acción Democrática and Copei. But generally speaking towards the establishment that had build an imperfect but a democracy after all in the past century. So there’s some challenges going on there. Additionally what you have is also an opposition that is very heterogeneous from the very beginning and you have parties that are more left-leaning, for example La Causa R (Causa Radical). Well, Acción Democrática used to be or maybe still is a social democratic party. You have El Movimiento al Socialismo, the mass, which parts of it supported Chávez but then took away their support. And you also have more center, center-right parties, like Copei, Proyecto Venezuela. And then you have new parties emerging like Primera Justicia, Unidad popular, Un Nuevo Tiempo. So again, a lot of movement going on there, parties trying to adapt to this new situation, trying to understand what’s going on with Chávez, what Chávez really wants to do as well. Because again, his promise was to implement a new political system, but ultimately you only know what that means when he starts really ruling, right? So in terms of ideology, as I said, you have this huge variance. You also have a strategic heterogeneity about how to deal with the government and with Chavismo in terms of strategies and I will link that to my coordination work in a second. But just very broadly, there are several cleavages along the strategic spectrum, there are parties that have always preferred a more confrontational, extra-institutional sort of maximalist approach. So these strategies for example, coups or interventions, so these response to this idea actually maybe in a way also quite a liberal idea of Chavismo also has to disappear. They also need to get out of the political system, they’re not part of it. And so they have a sort of mechanism of rupture in their heads when they think about Chavismo. They just think they need to do away as well. And then you have other actors that are more institutionally moderate and here’s where the work of my colleague Laura Gamboa is also very crucial who analyzes Colombia and Venezuela particularly in those first years. And so you also have these groups that believe that, well, you need to participate in elections, you need to organize, you need to still build your party to face Chavismo at the polls, maybe primarily. And also organize obviously you know more collective action as more of a contention. Part of a mobilization but they’re really focused more on negotiations, trying to participate in elections etc. And so obviously when you have an opposition that is so divergent not only along ideological lines but also strategic preferences, it’s very hard to coordinate in the first place. And just one final point before I get into the formal and informal coordination is the normative preferences for democracy that in a way is also linked to the strategic preferences. So we oftentimes, or sometimes assume that everyone who’s deposing an autocratic power is democratic. But that’s not necessarily the case. So we know that there’s a literature on uncivil society, how, for example, armed groups that exist in societies that call themselves civil society, but they not necessarily want a democracy in their country and do not use democratic means to participate, more violent and radical means. And this is not to say that an opposition that is liberal necessarily has to be violent but this is to say that not everyone in the opposition has shown democratic attitudes, right? So for example, there are tensions in terms of what internal democracy within the opposition could look, internal debates. So the respect for pluralism, for tolerance has been questioned. And so that makes coordination very difficult because you have to sort of homogenize something that is very heterogeneous from the beginning. However, and this is where the puzzle really comes in, the opposition is very different but it has found ways to coordinate and so what from a theoretical point of view my work tries to to contribute is a differentiation in the ways that, one, in the ways that oppositions coordinate and, two, as to when they coordinate. So let’s first talk about the first element: it’s not the same to coordinate a protest altogether or to cross-endorse candidates than to actually create an electoral platform, an electoral coalition. Those two mechanisms are very different and they’re associated with different costs as well. So it’s potentially more work to establish a broad coalition, for example a program candidate. So this implies internal negotiation, trade-off etc., than calling for a joint protest. So what we see in Venezuela but also in other cases is that sometimes oppositions coordinate informally around more informal or short-term events and sometimes they do build this electoral coalition. So what you see in Venezuela over time is that at the very beginning of Chavismo but also now more recently you have more informal mechanisms for coordination as opposed to the more intermediate period of Chavismo where I argue repression was at intermediate levels. So it was a hybrid regime where parties build the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. So this is an electoral coalition that existed between roughly 2009 and 2015/16. So the first years of Chavismo the way that the opposition challenges or faces Chávez is through the Coordinadora Democrática. This is a very broad umbrella, well let’s say it’s not really an umbrella organization, it’s more of a space where all anti-chavista actors come together. So there is the private sector, there’s political parties or there are some civil society organizations also independents but there aren’t any internal mechanisms that can help these very different groups make decisions or mitigate their conflicts and so the way that it ends up being is that the more powerful actors in there, basically private sector and business people end up calling the shots during the first years and this obviously is also a result of what we talked about the party system collapse. So political parties weren’t really in a place where they could really make an argument or – let’s say – try to impose a more institutional way forward. So what you see during the first years is a coup attempt in 2002, strikes and mass protests. And obviously we couldn’t really say that all of those are extra institutional or maximalist ideals behind it. I think that because Chavez very quickly and moves over to this very pernicious polarization, as Jennifer McCoy would call it. So a very tough dividing discourse between the real people versus the elites and the corrupt elites. And all of those divisions and very harsh discourse from his presidency really creates incentive for other parts of society to participate. Also he proposes a ley habilitante so to rule by decree and many people go to the streets because they weren’t used to this. And they really didn’t want to accept this. So I’m saying this because it wouldn’t be fair to say that all of those strikes and all of those protests and all of those were really only behind this lens of a sort of a maximalist and extra institutional opposition. I think that there were also organizations that legitimately mobilized some people who were legitimately mobilized against and these very expressions of democratic erosion. Now in the face of basically those failures of those strategies because ultimately they can’t dislodge Chavez from power. As a result of this failure, then private sector, business people, they sort of take a step back and leave this mess to political parties. But at the end of the day, after those poor strategic choices during the first five years, what you see is political parties coming back to the table. And so you see the first informal coordination around more institutional means in 2006, where crucial figures like Manuel Rosales, Julio Borges and [name]. They agree that the way forward is actually presenting one candidate for the 2006 presidential election. And so I don’t want to go into all the details to not bore the audience too much. But basically what you see is parties regaining control of the strategy formation process and so as a result of that and also as a result of authoritarianism and repression increasing, you have the establishment or emergence of this coalition called La Mesa de la Unión Democrática. And so why I call this a formal coordination mechanism is because parties decide that they do need internal mechanisms, one for decision making and also for conflict resolution. You also have working commissions that then work on more programmatic issues. You also have these mechanisms that I talked about around candidate selection and you have a more organized and coordinated way of dealing with electoral campaigns and so these strategies allow the opposition to grow to become more credible for voters. It allows it to let’s say more sustainably mobilize and organize around a purpose and around a clear object. A mechanisms which was: no, the way to dislodge Chavismo from power is actually true through the polls. And they even though I would say it was an unstable consensus because in that coalition, you also had parties that were very critical of participating in a context where democracy had been eroding for quite some time. This consensus fades over time. It has a first expression of that in 2014 where you have a movement called La Salida, put forward by Leopoldo López, María Corina Machado and Antonio Lezdema. And so what they want is they want to put back the sort of extra institutional mechanisms to get rid of Chavez on the table, well, at that time Maduro because Chavez passes away earlier on and in March 2013. And so basically it’s a back and forth, back and forth between these strategic preferences and in a white parties can mitigate those conflicts in 2015 and I want to close with that, which is the landslide victory of the opposition under non-democratic conditions. This organization coordination paid off and it wins the super majority in the parliamentary elections in December 2015. So this approach or strategic preferences of actors of not wanting to participate because it wasn’t possible to win loses power, it loses strength because it was in fact possible to win. Many years later in 2021 – actually only last year – and the regional elections in 2021 in November, you also see is that despite the more repressive nature, the more authoritarian nature of Maduro’s government, what you see is that when the opposition coordinates, does some back channeling, also coordinates with grassroots movements and persists on the electoral route also with obviously credible democratic opposition leaders, it is capable to win. So basically the story of the opposition is trying to deal with these intrinsic dilemmas that exist on their own, but also with dilemmas induced by the government for example through repression. It’s not just the levels of repression but also as I argue about the direction of repression and there’s also really interesting work on other cases. Also one by Elizabeth Nugent who talks about whether parties are being targeted or not all targeted at the same time and how that changes their experience as well. I also try to apply this argument to Venezuela and what you see there is that the nature and the target of repression also shapes the incentives for coordination. So as of today, yes, there is a co-opted opposition that is not being targeted and so that opposition or let’s say non-Chavista groups, they participate in the authoritarian system and they’re not necessarily looking forward to changing those rules of the game towards a more democratic system. Those are being targeted less and within the more democratic group that is seeking regime change, the government also applies repression differently. It targets maximalist groups sometimes more to exacerbate the internal dilemmas and it sometimes lets more moderate institutional leaders participate to sort of to not close the door completely right to actors who would be willing to negotiate and give them an exit in the face of a democratic transition. That even though it seems unlikely, who couldn’t say that Venezuela is never going to transition to democracy in the future.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks a lot for sharing all those insights. So that was quite a great overview! Also to me the 2015 parliamentary election was probably a key moment both because the opposition, the MUD movement, that was able to actually win that landslide victory with about a two-thirds of the seats. Still in the aftermath it led to even more repression by the president Maduro. Do you think that there were any strategic errors by the opposition after this landslide victory or was it just a fight for who essentially had more power, the presidency or the parliament. What happened after this landslide victory?

Maryhen Jiménez: Yeah, well this is a fascinating question because it really directs to the dilemmas that we were just talking about. But let me just very briefly say, as I argue in my work, the relationship between repression and coordination is dynamic. So the government obviously fears an opposition that is coordinated and that has established those linkages to let’s say Civil Society Movements, that really takes participation seriously. Why? Well because they have lost popular support, right? So Chavismo relies more on physical repression and even more non-physical repression, so violent and nonviolent repression, more institutional mechanisms of repression once it loses popular support. And so there’s something really interesting going on within Chavismo itself and the support of those bases. So because at the very beginning – and this is something that we shouldn’t forget – Chávez had at a time even 60% of popular support even though he was eroding democracy and that’s also happening for example at the moment in Mexico or in El Salvador. So we shouldn’t forget that people consciously sometimes vote for autocrats or autocrats in the making. And so what both Chávez but also Maduro really fear is an opposition that really understands the country, first of all, society’s very heterogeneous needs. And an opposition that is coordinated and decided and has decided to participate in elections because they can lose, they can lose. And stealing elections doesn’t always end well because if – and we’ve seen this in other societies as well – when autocrats steal elections but you have a mobilized society and the sort of sense of victory among society, well you could have mass mobilizations that in the end also end up toppling or dislodging the autocrat, right? So this is always an asymmetry of information but elections also represent a risk for autocrats. Even though there is an unlevel playing field for the opposition. So what you see in Venezuela is that both Chávez and Maduro – just to wrap up this point – they repress more obviously when they see that the opposition is getting its act together and is coordinating its events. So it starts to repress its leaders, it starts to repress the basis or party structures beyond Caracas to obviously instill fear and exacerbate all those pre-existing dilemmas that we talked about. Now that’s what we see after 2015 because Maduro then has the final proof, the definite proof that he in fact loses elections by a landslide, not just by a small margin. And so it impedes obviously the opposition from doing their job in parliament. That’s one part of the story. But the other part of the story is that that victory also changes the understanding of the conflict and the incentives for keeping up this electoral coalition that actually allowed the opposition to win. So it’s very counterintuitive in a way, because instead of holding on to this coalition, what the different party leaders do is sort of paying less attention to it and sort of dismantling it, because they think it’s no longer needed. So then everything moves to the national assembly and to rather than collective decision making more individual collective decision making. How? Well, parties had agreed that they will alter the presidency of the speaker of the National Assembly. So you had different parties, leading or heading the National Assembly during those 5 years and in the end this is where it leads to the interim government or so-called interim government established in 2019 by Voluntad Popular and Juan Guaidó. But the first president is Henry Ramos Allup of Acción Democrática. And so you have different parties presiding the National Assembly and so what this then represents is that these leaders have a greater impact on decision making and how they see the conflict unfolding and what again we’re back into the discussion of how Chavismo should be challenged. Should it be with a referendum? Should it be through a constitutional amendment? Should the opposition ask for Maduros resignation? Should it be an international intervention? So many years in a way get lost all of this obviously while the government is increasing repression. All these years get lost in this internal debate which ultimately is about what you’re referring to about who in a way can capitalize a transition to democracy, right? So who is the party that can lead that transition and who ultimately whose leaders and whose party base is going to benefit more. Obviously the tragic story is that that didn’t end up happening. But what ended up happening is increased authoritarianism and increased repression in Venezuela. So that victory instead of validating the need for a coalition and for internal institutions, meaning decision making counter resolution mechanisms that victory ended up exacerbating, maybe also understandable or quite legitimate needs of political leaders and parties trying to win or benefit individually of that victory. And so what you end up having is a more fragmented opposition over time. And now, well in the face of almost two years from now on you will have a possibly, we don’t know, but possibly you have a new presidential election. And so instead of having a hold onto the Mesa de la Union Democrática, you then had new mechanisms, new informal mechanisms and new platforms like El Frente Amplio. Then the interim government which also didn’t solve the coordination process and the Plataforma Unitaria. And as of today in 2022, parties are back at square one and they now need to again develop decision making rules. They need to accomplish resolution mechanisms. They haven’t worked really on a program, on an identity. They have lost popular support and obviously the social economic situation of the population is way worse than it was in 2015. So what I’m trying to highlight is just the costs, the negative costs of not having hold on to that mechanism that was so costly to build in the first place.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks a lot for all these fascinating insights and it will be interesting to see where Venezuela is going from here. Obviously we have left out a lot of details, a lot of institutional changes. But there is only so much time in an episode. But I’ll definitely link to your research, to your website. But apart from that do you have any recommendations of articles or books that you think are really insightful in this context.

Maryhen Jiménez: Well, in the face of censorship – and this is always something that we have to say – you know in Venezuela it’s not very easy to conduct research, first of all. But it’s also for journalists and civil society organizations, it has also been very, very tough to communicate what’s going on and to be able to carry out their work nonetheless. As it happens society and societies resist authoritarian rule, right? And so also in Venezuela we have seen the emergence of new digital, for example, as a response to censorship, digital platforms like Prodavinci, Cinco8, you also have Efecto Cocuyo, TalQual, Armando Info. All of these are platforms that do more of journalistic accounts of what’s going on in Venezuela. But they also have really interesting and easy to process interviews with academics, for example, who try to explain what’s going on, what’s going on in the country. I would also maybe refer to Venezuelanas Investigan which is a network that we have created of female Venezuelan researchers who, not all of them focus just on Venezuela, but many of them do. And we’re on Twitter for example and you can follow some of these researchers’ work online and their profiles are also linked. I would also maybe recommend checking out the work that has been conducted by the Centro de Derechos Humanos at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. They have very interesting reports and insights on more of the human rights situation. WOLA also for example, also has a podcast on Venezuelan affairs that could be interesting to those who follow the Venezuelan case.

Stephan Kyburz: Great, I’ll link to those all of course and I’ll be happy to follow myself as well. There would be so many more questions to answer, so many more and aspects of the Venezuelan democracy or the erosion of Venezuelan democracy to talk about but I think for now we leave it at that. And Maryhen I’m very grateful that you have taken the time and I wish you all the best with your research and also all the best hopefully for Venezuela in the future.

Maryhen Jiménez: Thank you so much for this invitation. It was a pleasure and maybe we’ll have an opportunity to discuss more issues in the future.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, that would be great, I’d be very happy. Thanks a lot.

Maryhen Jiménez: Thank you.