Venezuela’s unraveling: War of polarization paves the road to dictatorship
Country: Venezuela
Venezuela’s two-decade-long march to dictatorship—and an economic and humanitarian disaster of untold proportions—has deep roots. The most worrying parallel to the United States is political polarization, which paralyzed the opposition and protected the government until it was too late.
Lessons:
Hugo Chávez was able to build a dictatorship and systematically violate civil and democratic rights due to factors that cleared the way, such as massive inequality, intense polarization, and opposition infighting and disorganization, all of which current conditions intensifying polarization and eroding democratic institutions in the United States.
Norms and “soft guardrails” of democracy can be destroyed both by those in power and by those in opposition.
Critics of U.S. President Donald Trump should be careful to separate attacks on his anti-democratic and norm-violating tendencies from any ideological and policy disagreements.
When Hugo Chávez was elected as Venezuela’s President in 1998, he showed only hints of the authoritarianism to come. While Chávez first gained fame in a failed (but popular) coup attempt seven years prior to his election, he was not, strictly speaking, a dictator. He had no reason to be. Democracy had delivered where a coup had failed, elevating Chávez from lieutenant colonel to president in less than a decade.
That changed in 2002 when Venezuela’s elite—panicked by Chávez’s attempts to gain control of the state-run oil industry—deposed him in a coup of their own, installing as president Pedro Carmona, the head of the business lobby.[1] The provisional government lasted less than 48 hours before Chávez (then unquestionably the democratically elected president) was restored. But the coup permanently shifted the relationship between Chávez and his critics; what had been simmering tension became an all-out polarized war.[2] Over the following 11 years, until his death in 2013, Chávez made it clear he intended to win at any cost. His chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, has done the same.
By channeling longstanding class resentments, Chávez and Maduro were able to build a durable political base among the historically marginalized working class. Buoyed by government largesse and—for the first time in history—the thrill of political power, many of Chávez’s supporters developed an almost religious devotion to his movement. For years, this bloc of voters made him politically invulnerable, even as the bill for his government’s economic mismanagement and corruption started to come due. his broad support gave Chávez, and Maduro after him, cover to chip away at Venezuela’s democratic institutions. First by seizing control of the media and telecoms, then by abolishing term limits via referendum, then through a law allowing rule by decree and, finally, after the opposition won a supermajority in the National Assembly, inventing an all-powerful “constituent assembly” of supporters with unlimited power—supposedly to rewrite the constitution, but in practice a self-coup eliminating all real democracy.[3] The result has been some of the most consistent violations of civil and human rights in the Western Hemisphere.[4]
That said, Chávez’s critics have not been without fault, even after the disastrous coup attempt. Almost from the beginning, many refused to accept Chávez—and the historical grievances of his supporters—as legitimate, fueling the cycle of polarization that eventually shattered the country. Moreover, divisions between the radical and moderate wings of the opposition hamstrung any attempts to build a broad political coalition.[5] Chávez and Maduro, in turn, had an uncanny ability to goad the opposition into overreaching, fighting amongst themselves, and continuing to escalate in rhetoric and tone—all of which may have doomed any possibility of restoring democracy.
Venezuelan democracy was not just stolen. It was eaten alive from within. In fact, Yale political scientist Milan Svolik argues in a comprehensive study that polarization should be seen as the primary culprit behind Venezuela’s demise.[6] “In politically polarized societies, most voters have a strong preference for their favorite candidate or party, often to the point of detesting those at the other political extreme,” says Svolik. “In Venezuela, for instance, more voters identify at the extreme left or right than in the middle.”[7]
Importantly, this polarization is strictly class-based, with little familial, social, and community overlap between pro- and anti-Chavista factions. This made it even easier for each side to demonize the other as illegitimate or the puppet of some nefarious or foreign influence. Chávez and Maduro took advantage of this deep divide to win elections (or mask electoral fraud), to harass critics, and to enable violence and repression.[8] While polarization in the United States is not driven as singularly by class, there is evidence that growing income inequality has widened political divides.[9]
The United States is not Venezuela and Trump is no Chávez.[10] But Venezuela’s disintegration should still be a firm warning for all who care about democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law in the United States. Polarization is dangerous and powerful.. Once defeating the other side becomes more important than anything else, rights and democracy are almost certain to fall by the wayside.
“Once defeating the other side becomes more important than anything else, rights and democracy are almost certain to fall by the wayside. ”
This should be worrying: polarization in the United States is clearly at a high-water mark (at least for the past many decades) and is increasingly viewed as a problem by many..[11] With a growing winner-takes-all mindset and the gradual normalization of what Mark Tushnet calls “constitutional hardball” (the willingness to engage in high stakes ploys to reshape governing institutions for political ends), polarization is clearly having an impact.[12] Even though, to date, this has been asymmetric, that could easily change with both sides moving to extremes, trying to win at any cost and further enabling the other’s worst impulses.
The consequences of Venezuela’s 2002 coup also suggest that Trump’s critics should resist the temptation to reject his election (or the voter grievances he represents) as illegitimate. Many in Venezuela’s opposition made the mistake of conflating their policy and ideological disagreements with their concern for the rule of law and democracy. Doing so with Trump—in impeachment proceedings or simply rhetorically—could similarly backfire, undermining legitimate criticisms of anti-democratic tendencies and, by extension, the very norms needed to rebuild institutions.
Venezuela poignantly teaches that an intensely polarized political environment that encourages defeating one’s opposition at all costs paves the way to trample democratic norms and degrade democratic institutions, with serious consequences across the economy and society. In the end, Trump is a democratically elected president, just as Chávez once was. While authoritarian impulses are clearly dangerous and the cycle of American polarization is showing no signs of slowing, neither means that democracy in the United States has failed, but eternal vigilance remains the cost of its defense.
Recommended Reading:
End Notes:
[1] Alex Bellos, “Chavez Rises from Very Peculiar Coup,” The Guardian, April 15, 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/15/venezuela.alexbellos.
[2] Alan MacLeod, “Who Is to Blame for Polarisation in Venezuela?,” LSE Latin America and Caribbean (blog), February 12, 2019, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2019/02/12/who-is-to-blame-for-polarisation-in-venezuela/.
[3] “Venezuela’s Chavez Era,” Council on Foreign Relations, 2013, https://www.cfr.org/timeline/venezuelas-chavez-era; Michael Shifter and Ben Raderstorf, “Venezuela After the Constituent Assembly,” Foreign Affairs, August 1, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-08-01/venezuela-after-constituent-assembly.
[4] “World Report 2019: Venezuela,” Human Rights Watch, January 24, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/venezuela.
[5] David Luhnow, Juan Forero, and José de Córdoba, “‘What the Hell Is Going On?’ How a Small Group Seized Control of Venezuela’s Opposition,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2019, sec. World, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-hell-is-going-on-how-a-tiny-cabal-galvanized-venezuelas-opposition-11549555626.
[6] Milan Svolik, “When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue: Partisan Conflict and the Subversion of Democracy by Incumbents,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3243470.
[7] Milan Svolik, “Analysis | This Explains Why Venezuelans Reelect Leaders Who Dismantle Democracy,” Washington Post, April 10, 2017, sec. Monkey Cage https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/10/this-explains-why-venezuelans-reelect-leaders-who-dismantle-democracy/.
[8] “Violence and Politics in Venezuela” (International Crisis Group, August 17, 2011), https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/venezuela/violence-and-politics-venezuela.
[9] Nolan M. McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, “Political Polarization and Income Inequality,” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2003, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1154098.
[10] Timothy M. Gill, “Analysis | People Are Comparing Donald Trump to Hugo Chávez. That’s Mostly Wrong.,” Washington Post, October 17, 2016, sec. Monkey Cage https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/17/people-are-comparing-donald-trump-to-hugo-chavez-thats-mostly-wrong/.
[11] John Gramlich, “86% of Americans Say Conflicts between Democrats, Republicans Are Strong,” Pew Research Center (blog), December 19, 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/19/far-more-americans-say-there-are-strong-conflicts-between-partisans-than-between-other-groups-in-society/.
[12] Mark Tushnet, “Constitutional Hardball,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, October 9, 2003), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=451960.
