Thwarting Electoral Revolution: The Communal State and Authoritarian Consolidation in Venezuela

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: In 2017, Venezuela appeared to be on the brink of democratic transition. After former president Hugo Chavez’s death and amid a crippling humanitarian crisis, Venezuela’s quasi-authoritarian regime lost in the country’s 2015 parliamentary elections. According to studies on rapid transitions out of autocracy, the electoral defeat, combined with deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and prolonged social unrest in 2016 and 2017, should have resulted in democratic transition. Today, however, Venezuela remains under the regime’s control and continues to sink deeper into authoritarianism. This thesis argues that the Venezuelan regime’s political survival was the result of two strategies for authoritarian consolidation that began developing once Chavez came to power in 1999. The first was a military strategy focused on maintaining the Armed Forces’ loyalty and protecting against popular mobilization. The second was a bottom-up strategy centered on a series of communal governance structures that later evolved into mechanisms for social control. The gradual development of these consolidation strategies over the years is what ultimately allowed the Venezuelan regime to thwart democratic transition in 2017.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2019

Author	Trivella, Alexander
Primary advisor	Magaloni, Beatriz
Advisor	Trinkunas, Harold
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law

Subject	Competitive Authoritarianism
Subject	Authoritarian Consolidation
Subject	Venezuela
Subject	Hugo Chavez
Subject	Nicolas Maduro
Subject	Electoral Revolution
Subject	Communal State
Subject	Estado Comunal
Subject	Communal Councils
Subject	Communal Governance
Subject	Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law
Subject	CDDRL
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/xr216rc9013

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Trivella, Alexander. (2019). Thwarting Electoral Revolution: The Communal State and Authoritarian Consolidation in Venezuela. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/xr216rc9013

Stanford University, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. (CDDRL)

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