The Confrontational ‘Us and Them’ Dynamics of Polarised Politics in Venezuela:
A Post-structuralist Examination
Ybiskay González Torres Soc. MA.
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Newcastle
May 2018
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Acknowledgments
To your infinite love, ‘Yo soy’.
This thesis in politics is the result of receiving a scholarship to study at the University of Newcastle and is the direct product of my family’s effort. It is also the accumulation of four years of research and supervision by Dr Sara Motta and contribution of Dr Tod Moore.
Especial thanks to Sara Motta. I was blessed to have her as my supervisor. Her infinite strength, love, knowledge and insight pushed me to sharpen my work and consider the tough questions. I would not have achieved this work without her hours of patience in guiding me. This thesis has made me realise that a new world is possible, but the journey is long and faces many obstacles from our assumptions and structured power.
I wish to thank Dr Jim Jose and John Tate for their participation in discussions and their feed-back. I also want to thank my friends I made during the journey in the cohort of PhD, Sachi and Nong, with whom I shared some fascinating moments about PhD life. Also, many thanks to Ruth who read some parts of my thesis and listened to my worries about my country, and Lila who helped me with copy-editing.
I am also grateful for everyone who helped me complete my fieldwork in Caracas. Thanks to my family in Venezuela who have been living a terrible economic crisis during the last four years. To my mother Consuelo Torres and my grandmother Irma Sánchez, they are part of this thesis before I was born.
To the many friends in Venezuela, in particular Humberto Rojas, Carolina Carrera, Felix Batista, Andy Delgado and new acquaintances, who I made during the field research in Venezuela, thank you for your support. Also, thanks to Florshebat Quiñones and the Sánchez family for sharing news about Venezuela. Most of all, my special thanks to my son Eduardo Sánchez and my husband Eliezer Sánchez for their words, debates at home, patience and love during these last four years.
I dedicate this thesis to both Eduardo and Eliezer.
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Contents
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
1.1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES ...... 8
1.2. SIGNIFICANCE AND CONTRIBUTION ...... 10
1.3. ORGANISATION OF THE THESIS ...... 15
CHAPTER 2 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ...... 17
2.1. MAINSTREAMING POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ...... 18
2.2. LIBERAL REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY (REPRESENTATIVES HAVE A SAY IN GOVERNMENTS) ...... 26
2.3. PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY (DIRECT DECISION-MAKING) ...... 40
2.4. RADICAL DEMOCRACY (DECISION-MAKING AND POLITICAL DISCUSSION) ...... 45
2.5. CONCLUSION ...... 53
CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ...... 55
3.1. RESEARCHING POLARISATION: WHY A COMBINED APPROACH? ...... 56
3.2. CONCEPTUALISING DISCOURSE ...... 62
3.1.1. Discourse as Regime of Truth ...... 64
3.1.2. Discourse as Political Practice...... 68
3.3. THE SUBJECT: BETWEEN THE EFFECTS OF POWER AND AGENCY ...... 75
3.4. METHOD ...... 80
3.5. CONCLUSION ...... 85
CHAPTER 4 MAPPING OUT DISCOURSES OF PARTICIPATION ...... 86
4.1. PUNTO FIJISMO ...... 87
Oil Rent ...... 89
The Popular Sectors and the Caracazo ...... 94
4.2. TRANSITION TO PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY...... 96
The New Constitution ...... 97
The Influence of the Left on Participatory Democracy ...... 100
Participatory Governance in the First Years of the Chávez Government...... 102
4.3. POLITICAL CONFLICT: THE MANIFESTATION OF A PERNICIOUS POLARISATION ...... 104
The Opposition as Civil Society ...... 107 iv
Chavismo: “We Are the People” ...... 111
4.4. A POLARISATION DEEPLY ENTRENCHED IN SOCIETY ...... 114
The Opposition’s New Agreements, The Same Discourse ...... 116
Transition to 21st Century Socialism...... 121
The Opposition’s Goals: Advancing or Retreating? ...... 125
The End of Chavismo? ...... 128
4.5. CONCLUSION ...... 129
CHAPTER 5 LOGICS OF HEGEMONY...... 131
5.1. PARTICIPATION AND CHÁVEZ’S CHAIN OF EQUIVALENCE ...... 132
5.2. THE OPPOSITION AND DEMOCRACY UNDER THREAT ...... 137
5.3. THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM ...... 145
5.4. SOCIALISM AS THE NEW SIGNIFIER ...... 153
5.5. THE CRISIS OF RENTISMO AND THE OPPOSITION REORGANISATION ...... 161
5.6. CONCLUSION ...... 167
CHAPTER 6 SUBJECTIVITIES AND POLARISATION ...... 169
6.1. THE INTERPLAY OF ‘UNCIVIL’ AND ‘CIVIL’ POLITICS: ‘THE OTHER’ IN THE OPPOSITION SIDE ...... 170
Citizens and anti-Chavistas: Self-Technology Analysis ...... 171
The Other: Disabling Chavistas as Political Agents ...... 180
Whiteness Democracy ...... 183
Intellectual Conservatism ...... 185
Inter-elite Consensus Elitism ...... 186
6.2. THE INTERPLAY OF CREATING ‘REVOLUTION’: ON THE CHAVISMO SIDE ...... 188
Chavistas, the Left and Resistance in Venezuela: Narrative Analysis ...... 189
Between Chávez’s Discourse and Building Revolution ...... 195
6.3. CONCLUSION ...... 204
CHAPTER 7 NORMALISING POLARISATION ...... 206
7.1. PDVSA MUST BE DEFENDED ...... 207
Locating PDVSA in the Political Context ...... 208
Analysis: Let’s Save PDVSA ...... 212 v
The New PDVSA is ‘Roja, Rojita’ ...... 218
7.2. SPEAK OUT, YOU NEED TO BE IDENTIFIED ...... 225
A Short History of Gustavo Dudamel and Gabriela Montero ...... 226
Analysis: “I have to talk” ...... 227
7.3. CONCLUSION ...... 236
CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION: TRANSCENDING THE LOGIC OF ANTAGONISM ...... 238
8.1. THE LIMITS OF REVERSING HEGEMONY ...... 238
8.2. AN OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN CONTRIBUTIONS...... 243
8.3. IMPLICATIONS OF PERNICIOUS POLARISATION IN POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION ...... 244
REFERENCES 248
APPENDIX A: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES ...... 290
APPENDIX B: PDVSA’S STATEMENT ...... 292
List of Tables
Table 1 Conceptualisations of Political Participation ...... 25
Table 2 Comparing Discourse Theory and Governmentality...... 80
List of Figures
Figure 1 Analytical Framework ...... 62
Figure 2 Historical Periods of Analysis ...... 87
Figure 3 Relevant Events of the Pact of Punto Fijo Period ...... 87
Figure 4 Beginning of Chávez Government ...... 96
Figure 5 Events of the beginning of Conflict ...... 104
Figure 6 Events Following the Radicalization of Chavismo and the Emergence of the MUD ...... 114
Figure 7 Events in the Post-Chávez Era ...... 125
Figure 8 Events related to the National Constituent Assembly 2017 ...... 128
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Acronyms
Acronym Spanish English AD Acción Democrática Democratic Action Party ANC Asamblea Nacional Constituyente National Constituent Assembly CC consejos comunale communal council CD Coordinadora Democrática Democratic Coordinator CNE Consejo Nacional Electoral National Electoral Council CLAP comité local de abastecimiento y local supply and production producción committee CLPP consejo local de planificación public planning council pública COPEI Partido Social Cristiano Social Christian Party (Comité de Organización Política (Committee for Independent Electoral Independiente) Electoral Political Organization) CTV Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuelan Workers’ Venezuela Confederation FEDECÁMARAS Federación de Cámaras y Federation of Chambers and Asociaciones de Comercio y Associations of Commerce and Producción de Venezuela Production of Venezuela MAS Movimiento al Socialismo Movement for Socialism MTA mesas técnicas de agua technical water committee MUD Mesa de la Unidad Democrática Democratic Unity Roundtable MVR Movimiento V [Quinta] República Fifth Republic Movement NCA Asamblea Nacional Constituyente National Constituent Assembly PCV Partido Comunista de Venezuela Venezuelan Communist Party PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. Plan 2001–07 Plan de Desarrollo Económico y National Economic and Social Social de la Nación 2001–07 Development Plan for 2001–07 Plan 2013–19 Segundo Plan Socialista Second Socialist Plan for 2013–19 2013–19 PSUV Partido Socialista Unido de United Socialist Party of Venezuela Venezuela UCAB Universidad Católica Andrés Bello Andrés Bello Catholic University URD Unión Republicana Democrática Democratic and Republican Union
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Abstract
This thesis explains how the tension between the articulations of liberal representative democracy and radical participatory democracy have put into motion a process that has resulted in a pernicious polarisation in Venezuela. It achieves this, through a poststructuralist examination of discursive formations historically and between 2001- 2017 around political participation and the dynamic of contestation between these two socio-political groups.
Jenifer McCoy’s term ‘pernicious polarisation’ is used here to differentiate what happens in Venezuela from the silenced ever-present polarisation between the ‘governed’ and those ‘governing’. To investigate this polarisation the thesis integrates a critical perspective inflected by Foucault’s concept of governmentaliy and Laclau and Mouffe’s conceptualisation of hegemony. The purpose is to provide a sound explanation able to recognise the limits of discursive formations of liberal representative democracy and radical participatory democracy, and the ways in which political transformation is delimited and channelled by co-option or incorporation into the dynamic of state institutions, and the logic of government.
The thesis makes three conceptual contributions to the debates on democratisation in Latin America and democratic political conflicts. The first concerns the nature of polarisation, which is demonstrated to involve a logic of antagonism on which hegemony relies. It demonstrates that polarisation was enabled by the use of hegemonic logics by both groups and the formation of an antagonistic subjectivity. The second contribution regards an analytical distinction of those involved in the polarisation. Whereas the opposition is grouped in its desire to remove Chavismo from government, there are two Chavismos: those in the government and the popular sectors. The result of this distinction is a bipolar hegemony: the phenomenon of competing populism, which curtails the political transformation desired by the popular sectors. The third conceptual contribution concerns, the function of polarisation. The thesis demonstrates that the strategic creation of narratives of enemy/friend can be seen as a technology of power, or a strategic instrument of government which dismantles possibilities of political transformation, normalizing a general understanding/practice of politics around a logic/rationality of ‘us not them’.
In the explanation of the pernicious polarisation, this thesis has challenged the dominant narrative of Venezuelan political conflict by demonstrating that by no means polarisation viii
is the result of one particular side or the unattended result of struggles for political transformation. Rather it is demonstrated that polarisation is due to a dynamic that involves the reproduction of hegemonic forms of representation in politics, which is premised or facilitates the logic of antagonism and its normalization.