Venezuela’s Autocratization, 1999–2021

Abstract

Abstract This chapter argues that the main driving force behind Venezuela’s transition to autocracy starting in 1999 was a combination of party system variable and institutional capture. In the first stage of this transition, from 1999 to 2010 under President Hugo Chávez, the party-related driving factor was a condition that is typical of many other backsliding cases: the ruling party became electorally dominant, while opposition parties declined and splintered. This party context conferred upon the president the ability to engage in executive aggrandizement, expanding the powers of the executive branch and reducing spaces for opponents. A secondary factor was massive fiscal spending, which gave the process a veneer of social justice. In the second stage, starting in 2010, the driving factor was the ruling party’s electoral decline along with institutional capacity. Amid a sudden renaissance of the opposition, the process of autocratization accelerated: Chávez before his death in 2013 and then his successor, Nicolás Maduro, pursued more aggressive forms of repression, without any pretense of populism, making use of pre-existing autocratic practices and institutions to carry out that repression.