Tyranny by the minority: Institutional control of participation in the Venezuelan democracy.

Abstract

Venezuela is often singled out as a model for stable democracy in Latin America. While the rest of the region has suffered through authoritarian regimes and violent insurgencies, Venezuela has maintained a system of free elections and universal suffrage since 1958. Previous scholarly work on Venezuela has generally fallen into two camps. One emphasizes the openness of the system especially the regularity and freedom of elections. A second body of work singles out pact making and the controlling role played by political elites. My work spans these two groups of literature by putting Venezuela in both the context of democratic theory and dependent developing countries. As a result, I show how Venezuela's political system is like all other democracies and the ways in which it is unique given its Latin American, developing capitalist nature. Pursuing these theoretical interests required in depth field work on the relationship between civil society and the state. My research details the participation of private groups in government decision making bodies. I show how institutions have been designed in the Venezuelan democracy to mobilize bias on behalf of some groups and classes and in opposition to others. Consultative commissions and entities within the decentralized public administration institutionalize the position of the parties, private capital, and organized labor. What is more, statistical analysis shows that these institutions and participation within them is immune to elections and democratic politics. These institutions thus serve two purposes: (1) to isolate decision making from popular pressure preserving it for privileged groups; and (2) to promote conciliation and dialogue among these key sectors allowing them to reach agreements regularly. After using these data to define the political haves and the political have nots, I then examine the dynamics of the relationships among the haves including executive branch officials, private capital, and organized labor. I argue that stability has been achieved not only by isolating decision making from the popular arena but also by maintaining fluidity among the most powerful groups. Multivariate OLS regression techniques are used to show how these privileged groups mobilize resources to influence their relative representation in decision making bodies.