Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies, 2019 Vol. 3, No. 2, 1-26 Venezuela and Its Labyrinth: Institutional Change and Authoritarianism in Twenty-first-Century Socialism1 Miguel Ángel Latouche R. Universidad Central de Venezuela
[email protected] Since 1999 Venezuela has experienced a very intense process of institutional transformation that has favored the capacity of the executive branch and its allies to undermine democracy by democratic means. Political confrontation has produced important changes in the distribution of political power among relevant actors, increasing the control of Chavismo over the political system by eroding normative restrictions on power accumulation, reducing civil liberties, and imposing strict control over mass media and political freedoms. Endogenous institutional change has produced a variation on equilibrium that furthers the interests of Chavismo and its allies while excluding important sectors of the population and imposing authoritarianism and political persecution as a mechanism of political control in a double-edged process through which power accumulation allows institutional change, which in turn allows increased political control. Keywords: Venezuela, democracy, institutions, power distribution, bargaining, authoritarianism, Chavismo Desde 1999, Venezuela ha experimentado un intenso proceso de transformación institucional que ha favorecido la capacidad del Ejecutivo, y sus aliados, para erosionar la democracia mediante mecanismos democráticos. La confrontación política ha producido cambios importantes en la distribución del poder político entre los actores relevantes. Esto ha incrementado el poder del chavismo sobre el sistema político y ha facilitado la reducción de las restricciones normativas a la acumulación del poder. En los últimos años los venezolanos han experimentado una importante reducción de las libertades civiles, controles estrictos sobre los medios de comunicación y la merma de sus libertades políticas.