CIAO DATE: 09/02

Venezuela: Popular Sovereignty versus Liberal Democracy

Michael Coppedge

April 2002

The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Abstract

In order to evaluate accurately the state of democratic governance during the first years of the Chávez presidency, one must sharpen the distinction between democracy narrowly defined as popular sovereignty versus the more conventional notion of liberal democracy. Venezuela was no longer a liberal democracy in every respect. Instead, it became an extreme case of delegative democracy. The president enjoyed widespread popular support for almost everything he and his followers did, and this fact qualified his government as “democratic” in the narrow sense of popular sovereignty. But the systematic elimination of constraints on presidential action after 1998 increased the risk that Venezuela would cease to be a democracy by any definition in the future.

Governability also suffered because the new formulas regulating relations between government and opposition, among branches of government, and between state and civil society were both unstable and far from mutually acceptable. Chávez and his supporters saw themselves as agents of a deliberate and self-conscious revolutionary process and believed that expediency and unilateral impositions of new rules were justified by the need for a radical break with the past. Needless to say, this attitude also condoned a cavalier disregard for the rule of law, extending even to the constitution.

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