{"id":9344,"date":"2025-03-27T10:25:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T14:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9344"},"modified":"2025-03-27T10:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T14:25:29","slug":"lessons-from-venezuelas-democratic-collapse-how-opposition-movements-can-defy-autocratic-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9344","title":{"rendered":"Lessons From Venezuela\u2019s Democratic Collapse: How Opposition Movements Can Defy Autocratic Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
A demonstration led by opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado on August 8, 2024 in Caracas, Venezuela, one month after Venezuela’s presidential elections. (Photo via Shutterstock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until the 1990s, Venezuela was home to one of the most established democracies in Latin America. Today, however, it stands as one of the region\u2019s most firmly entrenched authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n

How did this shift occur, and what can other countries learn from Venezuela\u2019s transformation?<\/p>\n

A new paper<\/a> from political scientist Laura Gamboa<\/a> at the University of Notre Dame chronicles the country\u2019s 25-year evolution, during which Hugo Ch\u00e1vez and his successor, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, destroyed a system of checks and balances, ended competitive elections, terminated political rights and civil liberties, and harmed or killed scores of political opponents along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Venezuelan case provides several lessons for countries whose democracies are just beginning to erode,\u201d Gamboa said. \u201cIt shows that you should use all of the institutional spaces you have while you have them. Not leveraging those spaces is a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Hugo Ch\u00e1vez seized power<\/strong><\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s democracy began to erode in 1999, when newly elected President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez convened a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution for the country \u2014 a power grab that was carried out without the approval of the National Congress.<\/p>\n

Yet even after this power grab, the anti-Chavista coalition still controlled media outlets, exerted influence over the armed forces and the state-owned oil company, held seats in the legislature, received support from courts and oversight agencies, and had the ability to mobilize Venezuelans into the streets. Despite a significant presence within democratic institutions, the opposition chose instead to resist the erosion of democracy through radical strategies: a 2002 coup and the 2003 oil strike to push Ch\u00e1vez to resign.<\/p>\n

Laura Gamboa, assistant professor of democracy and global affairs, University of Notre Dame<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These strategies cost the opposition important bureaucratic and state resources because they gave Ch\u00e1vez the reason he needed to purge the military, fire oil company managers, and use oil revenues to buy domestic and international support, Gamboa said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing tactics like coups, boycotts or strikes can be effective ways to protest a government, but they can backfire when you leverage them against a popular and democratically elected president.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2006, the anti-Chavista coalition had lost most of the institutional resources that had previously been available, such as an independent media, and Ch\u00e1vez had asserted more power by appointing loyalists to oversight agencies and the country\u2019s courts. And yet, the opposition won back some elected offices in 2008 and 2015 and was able to use those elected offices to highlight some government abuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see from these successes that when you use institutions, there can be a good payoff,\u201d Gamboa said.<\/p>\n

Opposing Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gamboa\u2019s analysis showed that in recent years, even operating amid tight constraints, the opposition movement created opportunities to push against autocratization \u2014 for example, through Venezuela\u2019s 2024 presidential elections. Though incumbent Nicol\u00e1s Maduro declared victory amid widespread accusations of fraud, and despite several countries \u2014 including the U.S. \u2014 denouncing official results, opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado announced that tallies from more than 70 percent of the country\u2019s voting stations showed that Maduro\u2019s opponent, Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, had received 3.5 million more votes than the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one expected Venezuela to have elections,\u201d Gamboa said. \u201cThe opposition competed even though their ability to compete was diminished, and they won even though the odds of winning were very small. Yes, the regime clamped down, but it\u2019s significant that the opposition was able to express itself in an electoral space.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the 2024 election results suggest that winning an electoral contest is possible in a highly authoritarian environment, Gamboa said, an election win is not enough to guarantee a transition to democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the opposition chose to leverage both institutional and non-institutional strategies and use them together, that would probably be more powerful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The author of \u201cResisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies Against the Erosion of Democracy,\u201d Gamboa has studied Venezuela since 2013. Her new study,<\/a> published in a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on democratic erosion, was informed by extensive fieldwork that included interviews and archival research.<\/p>\n

Overall, Gamboa said, the case of Venezuela shows that democratic backsliding is a highly uncertain process, and more research on newer forms of autocratization and opposition strategies is needed. She is currently working on a book related to these issues, focusing on how regime type affects opposition strategies and their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past two decades, we have seen a significant decline in democracy across the world,\u201d she said. \u201cDemocracies have eroded into authoritarian regimes, and formerly weak autocracies have become more entrenched. For opposition movements in both of these cases, Venezuela offers lessons and hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Ren\u00e9e LaReau<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until the 1990s, Venezuela was home to one of the most established democracies in Latin America. Today, however, it stands as one of the region\u2019s most firmly entrenched authoritarian regimes. How did this shift occur, and what can other countries learn from Venezuela\u2019s transformation? A new paper from political scientist Laura Gamboa at the University of Notre…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/keough.nd.edu\/assets\/609945\/1600x900\/venezuela_protest.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9346,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344\/revisions\/9346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}