Abstract
This article analyzes the emergence and consolidation of political polarization in Venezuela during the so-called Bolivarian Revolution, led by Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro from 1999 to 2018. We also examine the conditions under which polarization in Venezuela became pernicious, and contributed to erosion of democracy. Given the underlying class cleavages that were associated with pro- and anti-Chavista identities, we argue that the central dimension of polarization began with a political-ideological rift around competing concepts of democracy—participatory and representative, the rights that each vision privileged (individual civil and political rights vs. collective social and economic rights), and the interpretation of participatory democracy as a complement or substitute for representative democracy. As a result, the inclusion of representative and participatory models of democracy in the 1999 Bolivarian constitution failed to deepen democracy. Instead, they came to be seen as mutually exclusive or incompatible. The result was a polarized democracy that became increasingly authoritarian.
Keywords
Venezuela represents an extreme case of polarization that we will define as pernicious, 1 exclusionary and, more recently, fragmented. Following Anderson (1983), Fraser (1992), Habermas (2000), Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), and Warner (2005), we understand polarization as part of the public sphere, where antagonistic political narratives are exacerbated to such a degree that they act as prisms through which all forms of public social interaction are interpreted.
Polarization implies two conflicting forces or groups (divided by social class, political ideologies, or other characteristics) that are usually opposites; that is, groups that hold values, principles, interests, and ideologies that are perceived as incompatible and exclusionary. In this context, rational debate based on shared constitutional principles seems impossible because there are no common values and interpretations through which to engage in dialogue and conciliation. The differences between the groups tend to stimulate conflict and make it difficult to achieve the ideological, political, and social consensus needed for democratic governability. In the extreme form of polarization, where principles, interests, and/or ideologies are perceived as antagonistic, attempts to eliminate or suppress the “other,” frequently considered an enemy, may justify exclusion and the use of violence (Mallen and García-Guadilla 2017; McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018; Lozada 2002).
Polarization in Venezuela’s Participatory Democracy
Mallen and García-Guadilla (2017) define the polarization that took place in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) as “a state of heightened tension between citizens, whose very subjectivity [was] subsumed under their perceived political affiliation” (p. 4). From 2001 to 2018, tensions and conflicts from polarization became so severe that “all forms of public social interaction [were] interpreted through antagonistic political narratives” (p. 5). In other words, political identities became social identities, with all of the accompanying dynamics of intergroup conflict in which group members trust and like their own group but distrust and dislike the “other” group.
Polarization has been linked to poverty and social exclusion (Chakravarty 2009; Knox and Pinch 2010; Moulaert, Rodriguez, and Swingedouw 2003) and to heightened social class cleavages (García-Guadilla 2003, 2007; Ellner 2003). It has also been associated with the transition from authoritarian regimes to representative democracy, as in Turkey, the Arab Spring countries, and Hungary after the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Agh 2012; McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018). Somer and McCoy (2018) have pointed out three theoretical possibilities in the relationship between democracy and polarization: polarization contributing to the deterioration of democracy, polarization resulting from democratic crisis, and the more positive outcome of polarization contributing to democratic deepening (p. 3).
Despite Venezuela’s historic high levels of poverty, social inequality, and social class differences, the country did not suffer class warfare or overt polarization before President Hugo Chávez came to power (Naim and Piñango1984); neither did polarization occur during the transition from the Perez Jiménez dictatorship to liberal-representative democracy in 1958. As we explain, polarization in Venezuela materialized with Hugo Chávez’s rise to power and the incorporation of participatory democracy in the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999. The constitution defines democracy as “participatory and protagonist,” as well as “representative,” with the aim of including the previously excluded sectors of society. It excluded the previously dominant groups (mainly the middle and upper classes), who then became the political opposition. Polarization is thus associated with the ambiguous constitutional definition of democracy, with the relationship between representative and participatory democracy and the singular, rather than plural, concept of the people as the constitutional authority (the “sovereign”).
Other interrelated socioeconomic, institutional, political-ideological, and socio-psychological contributing factors included: high levels of poverty and social inequity; Chávez’s Bolivarian revolutionary vision, which was incompatible with the existing liberal regime; President Chávez’s identification of the popular sector as the source of constitutional authority and his emphasis on including this group while excluding the middle and upper classes; and, finally, attempts by both groups to create exclusionary dominant narratives to explain social reality where the other group was identified as the enemy. 2
The Socio-Political Context of Venezuela’s Polarization: 1958–2018
Venezuela’s longest experience with democracy began after the coup d’état against the military dictator Pérez Jiménez in 1958. In its aftermath, political parties, the economic elite, the military, the trade unions, and the church entered into the Pact of Punto Fijo, assuring gradual reform and a model of social peace based on broad distribution of oil revenues (López Maya, Calcaño, and Maingón 1989). The resulting Venezuelan Constitution of 1961 outlined a liberal-representative democracy where the only democratic exercise was voting for the president. 3 According to Rey (1991) and Romero (1997), participation in the election of regional and local authorities or other forms of participation were excluded from the political process for the sake of the fledgling democracy’s political stability. By the end of the 1980s, with oil revenues falling and the national debt rising, this political agreement could not ensure “consensus and stability,” and the political alliances were broken. Moreover, in 1989, the acute oil-related economic crisis led the government of Carlos Andrés Perez to apply neoliberal macroeconomic adjustment policies that caused widespread riots and political instability, with high costs for the legitimacy of the entire political party system, which the popular sector viewed as broadly collusive.
In December 1998, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez, a political outsider, was elected as President of Venezuela, representing the final breakdown of the Pact of Punto Fijo, which had lasted for 40 years (1958–1998). He entered politics espousing an anti-neoliberal discourse and adopting an agenda that blamed capitalism and neoliberal economic austerity measures for poverty, social inequality, and even polarization. Like his predecessors, Chávez promised to use oil benefits to end poverty and to include the excluded sectors of society. But he also promised to reform the democratic process to reduce the influence of the corrupt elite, whom he blamed for Venezuela’s ills. Once elected, in February 1999, he convoked a constituent process to draft a new constitution, which was approved via referendum in December 1999. The resulting Bolivarian Constitution embodied the concept of democracy as “protagonist and participatory” and included the previously ignored and marginalized urban and rural poor sectors, 4 aiming to transform them from recipients to protagonists in the government’s decision-making process.
After Chávez’s death in 2013, his successor, the uncharismatic President Nicolas Maduro, tried unsuccessfully to fulfill Chávez’s final mandate, known as the “Rudder’s Coup” (Golpe de Timón; Chávez 2012): to strengthen the Bolivarian revolution by establishing the Communal State—the government’s model of direct democracy. The new order was to comprise communal councils promoted by President Chávez that, in aggregate, would form communes. In turn, communes would form federations, confederations, and communal cities. These new forms of citizen organization, as well as social welfare programs, received direct funding from the government. After Chávez died, the decline of oil prices, widespread corruption, high rates of inflation, and the inefficiency and failure of President Maduro’s anti-neoliberal economic policies resulted in a decline in social welfare programs and hindered the implementation of the Communal State. 5 Poverty increased (ENCOVI 2017), and even the popular sectors were excluded from the basic food program (bolsas CLAPS) if they did not ideologically align with the regime. Managed by the military and the government’s political party, PSUV, these programs accentuated the citizenry’s dependence on the government to meet basic needs.
After Maduro’s election to the presidency in 2013, the political opposition was divided over whether to pursue insurrectional or electoral strategies to achieve its objective of regime change. The opposition’s success in the December 2015 legislative election for the National Assembly, in which they gained a supermajority of representatives, prompted President Maduro to govern by decree. The National Assembly responded by protesting the laws and regulations that resulted from Maduro’s decrees. The opposition also collected signatures to hold a recall referendum against President Maduro in 2016, an effort that was eventually blocked by the National Electoral Council (CNE) at the end of that year. Massive new protests broke out in April 2017 after the Supreme Court nullified the National Assembly’s authority. In response, the Maduro government cracked down on the civilian protestors, arresting hundreds and using lethal force that resulted in more than 100 deaths.
In a procedure considered unconstitutional by the opposition, Maduro convened a new Constituent Assembly that superseded the authority of all levels and branches of government, including the National Assembly, governors, and local mayors. Its stated purpose was to draft guidelines for a more radical constitution that redirected the revolution toward the Communal State. In practice, the Constituent Assembly, installed on August 4, 2017, assumed de facto power and made all the country’s important political decisions, following Maduro’s dictates.
The economic crisis also led to what the opposition called “a humanitarian crisis”—resulting from hyperinflation and a severe scarcity of food, medical supplies, electricity, water, transportation, and other basic and social infrastructural services—that affected both the popular sectors and the middle class. Street protests multiplied as the popular sectors demanded access to food, medicine, and basic services. 6 The government responded with further repression and grew increasingly authoritarian (PROVEA 2014b, 2017; OVCS 2014, 2017).
How Polarization Emerged and Disrupted Democracy in Venezuela (1999–2018)
To explain the emergence, consolidation, deepening, fragmentation, and attenuation of polarization, we analyze various cycles of mass mobilizations after the ratification of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution. Supporters and detractors of the twenty-first-century socialist model each used mass mobilization as the strategy, aiming to demonstrate that they represented the numerical majority, and, therefore, the constitutional sovereign.
The constituent process of 1999: Seeds of polarization 7
This first cycle of mobilization extended from February 1999, when Chávez assumed the presidency and called for a Constituent Assembly, to December 2001, when the opposition took to the streets to protest the enabling laws decreed by Chávez. 8 The 1999 Bolivarian Constitution that resulted was one of the few points of consensus among Venezuelan citizens of different ideological positions, if not the only one.
Chávez’s revolution interpreted “constituent power” to be embodied by the “people”—its sole source of authority. The elected Constituent Assembly not only had the power to write a new constitution but also authority above all “constituted” powers, including the existing legislature and judiciary. Chávez’s first constituent process was nonpolarized, inclusive, participatory, and institutional; it included diverse organizations, institutions, and citizens. As a result, the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution reflects political-ideological differences (García-Guadilla and Hurtado 2000). Despite these differences, the constitution defines the government’s source of power as the unitary “people” (el pueblo), rather than employing the liberal democratic concept of pluralism, where competing individual interests coincide. This view of the people as a homogenous whole would become the primary source of polarizing political-ideological conflicts (García-Guadilla 2003; García-Guadilla and Mallen 2013). 9
One of the first polarizing conflicts in fact involved the definition of the constitutional sovereign, or source of constitutional authority, and how to best interpret the will of the people. In the 1999 National Constituent Assembly, the sovereign was defined as a unitary, indivisible mandate, rather like Rousseau’s concept of a singular and unequivocal “general will.” In contrast to the 2008 Ecuadorian and 2009 Bolivian constitutions, Venezuela’s constituent members defined themselves as representing the will of the people, as opposed to the will of different regions; ethnic groups; or religious, social, economic, and political interests. 10
As a result, when implementing inclusive public policies, President Chávez associated the sovereign—the source of constitutional authority—with only the previously excluded popular sectors (el Pueblo), as he in turn excluded the middle and upper class. By legitimizing participatory democracy as the voice of this sovereign, and as the chosen mechanism to achieve legitimacy, the government increased the potential for confrontation and eventually polarization. Under these new rules of the game, supporters and detractors of the regime tried to appropriate and represent this unique sovereign to legitimize their demands, ignoring the legitimate claims of their opponents. Increasingly, the two self-defined “sovereigns,” whom we will call the Chavistas and the opposition, took their fight for dominance and representation of the people to the streets in the form of massive mobilizations.
The Bolivarian Constitution included both representative and participative models of democracy but did not specify the mechanisms for their coexistence and implementation. In practice, this ambiguity led to two, mutually exclusive, models of democracy. One was the liberal democratic model of representation, supported by the opposition; the other, supported by Chavistas, was the radical or “communal” model based on a participatory-protagonist framework. The model of “liberal” democracy was based on Pact of Punto Fijo. In addition to favoring representation over participation, this model emphasized individual civil and political rights. In contrast, the radical or communal democracy proposed by Chávez privileged direct citizen participation and collective, socioeconomic, and cultural rights. Polarized conflict emerged from the need to resolve disputes concerning constitutional rights since the opposition tended to privilege representative democracy and interpreted participatory democracy as its complement, while Chavismo favored participatory democracy and attempted to replace representation with direct participation through institutions based on collective decision-making (García-Guadilla 2003).
The enabling laws (2001–2004) and the coup d’état: The emergence and consolidation of antagonistic polarization
In December 2001, violent protests broke out against the enabling laws; they lasted until 2004, when the opposition lost the recall referendum to remove President Chávez from power. This period can be characterized as polarized, exclusionary, nonparticipatory, and subversive.
After the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 was approved via referendum, the National Assembly attempted to develop, alongside the citizenry, the judicial body to institutionalize it. Due to the difficulties and delays in drafting the laws through participatory mechanisms and differences in the interpretation of representative and participatory democracy, President Chávez decreed the forty-nine so-called enabling laws (Leyes Habilitantes), which included the Land and Agrarian Development Law and the Law of Hydrocarbons.
The opposition claimed that the enabling laws embodied an interpretation of democracy different from the one laid out in the constitution, and that the laws contradicted liberal democratic values; the laws were perceived by the opposition as benefiting the poor sectors exclusively and disadvantaging traditional class interests and privileges. The opposition mobilized against the laws using both constitutional and insurrectional mechanisms to demonstrate their discontent and prove their numerical superiority through mobilizations and protests. 11
Chávez’s supporters also mobilized in favor of the laws, because they thought that they would benefit from them. As a result, two polarized groups of citizens were formed (the opposition and Chávez’s supporters) that, since December 2001, have continuously competed both constitutionally and extraconstitutionally to defend their values, interests, identities, and contrasting sociopolitical projects. 12 Initially, both groups conducted peaceful marches and organized parallel street protests with their own slogans, banners, and songs. But they began to clash violently when each group tried to take over symbolic public spaces that the other group considered to be its own territory.
From 2001 to 2003, the opposition used subversive strategies, beginning with the guarimbas (street protests including barricades and burning tires to impede pedestrian and vehicular passage). In April 2002, they perpetrated a failed coup d’état and a failed general strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, both aiming to remove Chávez from power.
As the polarizing conflicts gained visibility through the media, they extended into the societal sphere and encouraged the rise of territorial and spatial divisions that would eventually reconfigure the capital city of Caracas into polarized public spaces and ghettos (García-Guadilla 2003; García-Guadilla and Mallen 2013). This process transformed previously existing class differences into outright class conflicts, giving way to antagonistic differences or what McCoy, Rahman, and Somer (2018) define as “pernicious polarization.” These differences also materialized into two opposing social images associated with ideological position, social class, and place of residence, which manifested as polarized and antagonistic narratives about the “other” as the “enemy.”
The recall referendum, the student movement for “freedom” and the constitutional reform (2004–2012): New subjects and spaces for depolarization?
This period can be described as ideologically polarized but participatory and institutional. It began when the opposition again took the constitutional path and voiced its discontent and grievances against the government through existing mechanisms of representative and participatory democracy: the recall referendum against President Chávez in 2004, and the elections for president in 2006 and 2012, governors in 2008 and 2012, local mayors in 2008 and 2013, and the legislature in 2005 and 2010. The period ended with President Chávez’s call to radicalize the revolution toward the communal state, and with his death in 2013.
After losing the recall referendum against Chávez in 2004, the opposition began to focus on confronting the government through marches and other constitutional forms of protest. One of the most representative conflicts was the protest against the May 2007 “closure” (according to the opposition) or the “nonrenewal” (according to the government) of the broadcast license held by the media outlet RCTV, one of the oldest and most important television stations identified with the opposition. 13 The government’s decision to revoke RCTV’s license motivated high school and university students to mobilize in protest, for the first time in almost two decades, against the alleged violation of freedom of speech. The government, for its part, mobilized Bolivarian students belonging to newly created public universities. In this context, the Students for Freedom movement proposed a “depolarized” dialogue with the Bolivarian students. The olive branch ultimately failed because the students could not engage in dialogue without making reference to the polarized representations about the “other” (García-Guadilla and Mallen 2010).
Also in 2007, the opposition conducted peaceful marches and other forms of protest against Chavez’s proposal to reform the constitution. The proposed reform favored replacing representative democracy with participatory or direct democracy at the local and regional levels, and implicitly attempted to radicalize the revolution by institutionalizing new forms of geopolitical and socioeconomic organization known as the communal state. While the government and Chávez himself campaigned for the constitutional reform, university students who were opposed to such a reform, and who were already organized from their previous resistance over RCTV, banded with opposition parties. The “No” campaign succeeded, and the constitutional reform was rejected in a referendum.
Unlike the prior period of hyperpolarization, mobilizations against the closure of RCTV and against the constitutional reform of 2007 were conciliatory in their approach and did not question the legitimacy of the government. Moreover, in the case of the constitutional reform, both defenders and challengers generally agreed to use the mechanisms of participatory democracy (i.e., a referendum) to decide whether to approve it.
Despite the voters’ rejection of the constitutional reform, the government decided to approve many of its proposals through its majority in the National Assembly, which was controlled by the governing party after the opposition had boycotted the 2005 election. Many of the proposed reforms were incorporated into the so-called popular power laws—the Law of the Communes, the Law of the People’s Power, the Law of Public and Popular Planning, the Law of Social Accountability, the Law of the Communal Economic System, and the Law on Communal Councils. 14 These popular power laws focused on giving the popular sectors mechanisms for direct citizen participation. They deepened polarization, since the Socialist Development Economic and Social Plan of the Nation 2013–2019, based on such laws, was intended to radicalize the revolution by emphasizing collective rights and direct democracy over individual rights and representative democracy.
Attenuated polarization, fragmentation of the poles, and increasing authoritarianism (2013–2018)
The current period began with the death of Hugo Chávez and the arrival of Nicolas Maduro to power through special elections in 2013. It can be characterized by the use of institutional and subversive strategies, the attenuation of the social substrata of political polarization, and the fragmentation of both poles. In addition, conflicts between the government and the political opposition were accentuated by an acute economic and political crisis that resulted from falling oil prices, high levels of corruption, increased authoritarianism, and the criminalization of protests, among other factors. In this context of this crisis, the government accentuated the clientelist practices and excluded nonsupporters from receiving benefits.
During this period, the opposition frequently used the mechanisms of participatory democracy to demand regime change, i.e., Maduro’s resignation or early departure. They mobilized through both peaceful and violent street protests, particularly in the years between 2014 and 2017. 15 In 2016 they also initiated a recall referendum against Maduro, which was delayed and then blocked by the National Electoral Council in October of that year. While the popular sectors mobilized primarily around basic needs (food, medicine, and basic services such as water, electricity, gas, and transportation), the middle and upper classes protested for political change. As the lack of food and medicine became critical, the middle class at times joined the popular sectors in these protests; as a result, the social substrata of political and ideological polarization attenuated but did not disappear completely.
The opposition was divided about using the mechanisms of representative democracy to achieve their goal of removing Maduro and his party from power. In particular, because of the restrictions on candidates and parties and the inequitable conditions imposed unilaterally by President Maduro, much of the opposition questioned participation in the regional and local elections of 2017 and the presidential elections of 2018. The result was a high rate of electoral abstention and doubts about using representative democracy as a means to resolve conflicts. On the other hand, the economic crisis, high inflation, and the government’s growing use of economic policies and social programs to benefit only loyal partisans increased poverty and exclusion for ideological reasons. 16 Moreover, in addition to the exclusion of the opposition, the cooptation of the network of popular-sector social organizations, such as the communal councils, increased as a result of exclusionary partisan practices and military control of new social programs. The economic and political crisis (called a “humanitarian crisis” by the opposition) also contributed to a lessening of societal polarization, as all social groups were affected by the scarcity and high prices of food and medicine, the deterioration of basic services such as potable water and electricity, the lack of domestic gas and public transportation, and high rate of inflation. In this period, the opposition fragmented over disagreements on how to force political change to deal with the Maduro government’s increased authoritarianism, corruption, and lack of accountability. 17
One of the first events of this period, in 2014, involved the failed protests known as La Salida (the Exit), which emerged from divisions within the opposition. The La Salida protests began in February 2014, promoted mainly by two opposition political parties: Voluntad Popular, led by Leopoldo López, and VENTE, led by Maria Corina Machado; they lasted four months. The protesters, mainly young students, rejected President Maduro’s legitimacy and hoped to force him to resign. This “insurrectional” strategy resulted in a high number of deaths, injuries, and arrests due to severe repression by the police and the uncontrolled violent government-allied gangs known as the Colectivos (PROVEA 2014; OVCS 2014). La Salida also divided the opposition, represented in the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática), over the timing, objectives, and strategies of the protests, such as the use of violent guarimbas versus electoral mobilization.
In 2015, for the first time since Chávez came to power, the opposition won a majority in the National Assembly, legitimizing the use of the mechanisms of representative democracy. This victory brought temporary relief in the confrontation between the representative and participatory concepts of democracy—one of the underlying cleavages of polarization. President Maduro’s response to the opposition’s majority in the National Assembly was to convene the Communal Assembly (Parlamento Comunal), a parallel popular entity not mentioned in the Constitution but included in the popular power laws. Its main purpose was to replace the National Assembly and counteract its representative power with “protagonist participatory democracy.” 18 The Communal Assembly was unable to settle the differences among its members, however, and soon fell apart. Consequently, President Maduro asked the Supreme Court for extraordinary powers to govern by decree, sidelining the National Assembly.
Their supermajority in the National Assembly was interpreted by the opposition as a mandate to incarnate the will of the sovereign. As part of its political strategy, the opposition activated the mechanisms of participatory democracy by calling for a recall referendum against President Maduro in 2016. Nonetheless, this referendum was suspended by the government. Given the National Assembly’s belligerence, Maduro pressured the Supreme Court to neutralize it and to postpone the 2016 December election for governors for fear of an opposition win. In late March 2017, the Supreme Court went further, holding the National Assembly in contempt and eviscerating its legislative capacity. This act generated massive, daily protests from April through July 2017, which were harshly repressed and territorially polarizing. 19 Most of these protests were confined to the municipalities where the opposition held a majority. When protests attempted to cross the politically defined borders into “prohibited” areas of the cities, severe repression by police occurred and more than 100 people were killed.
In the middle of these conflicts, President Maduro ordered a new Constituent Assembly election to be held on July 30, 2017, and the opposition called a hasty and successful public consultation (Consulta Popular) against it on July 16, 2017. The opposition considered the convoking of a Constituent Assembly as unconstitutional and illegitimate, and boycotted the vote. The election process also garnered widespread international criticism. Despite these objections, the government installed the Constituent Assembly, which served as a parallel institution to the National Assembly and asserted its authority over the Assembly, similar to the supreme authority granted the 1999 Constituent Assembly. Conflicts once again evolved between representative and participative institutions, as most of the functions that constitutionally corresponded to the National Assembly were transferred to the Constituent Assembly, dominated by Maduro’s allies.
Beginning in 2015, the United States led an international movement to impose sanctions on individual government officials for their alleged human rights abuses and corruption, followed by financial sanctions that restricted the government’s ability to refinance its debt after August 2017 (Ramsey 2018). Given the high degree of polarization and political conflict amid a social and economic crisis, in 2016 and 2017 the international community also intervened to facilitate a dialogue between the government and opposition.
After several failed attempts at dialogue, a new round of mediation began in December 2017, hosted by the government of the Dominican Republic and assisted by five “friendly” countries chosen by both sides in the conflict. One of the main points of discussion was electoral conditions for the constitutionally mandated presidential election in 2018. As the talks began to falter, in January 2018 President Maduro rejected the opposition’s conditions and unilaterally ordered early presidential elections to be held on May 20, 2018. 20 The opposition fractured once again. Most political parties that were part of the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática decided not to participate, but a group of smaller parties backed an opposition candidate, Henri Falcón. The result was a high rate of abstention, a questionable victory for Maduro in a compromised electoral process, and the narrowing of representative and participatory spaces to resolve conflicts.
The consequences of the highly contentious polarization for the democratic regime were profound. The progressive elimination of spaces for peaceful protest and electoral contestation of power, along with the severe erosion of the separation of powers and the failure to protect universal rights, led many analysts to identify the Venezuelan regime as authoritarian by 2017 (Mancini 2014; Magdaleno 2018). The fear of retribution if they were to lose power presumably led the Maduro government to seek to retain power at all costs. On the other side, the lack of access to democratic mechanisms led some in the opposition to call for nondemocratic actions to remove the regime, following the pattern of democratic erosion in polarized contexts described by McCoy, Rahman, and Somer (2018).
The Nature of Venezuela’s Pernicious Polarization and Its Consequences for Democracy
Based on Somer and McCoy (2018)’s three possible relationships between democracy and polarization, the Venezuelan experience indicates that the relationship between democracy and polarization, as well as the definition of polarization as pernicious or benign, depends on the following interdependent and contributing factors.
First, a divided and incompatible interpretation of democracy became the explicit boundary line between the two camps in Venezuela, activating ideological and political polarization. The constitutional inclusion of two models of democracy, representative and participatory, and their interpretation as mutually exclusive or incompatible when it came to resolving disputes, led to polarization. The old elite and the middle and upper classes largely interpreted democracy as liberal-representative, while followers of President Chávez, who belonged mainly to the popular sectors, interpreted it as participatory or as a way to achieve inclusion and socioeconomic rights. As a result, disputes involving rights derived from one or the other model of democracy emerged as polarized conflicts. On the other hand, according to the Bolivarian Constitution, the model of participatory democracy presumed a major change in constitutional authority (from the individual to the collective Pueblo) and stressed competing rights (the defense of liberal rights versus socioeconomic and cultural rights). This facilitated the emergence of two types of subjects who polarized around the defense of competing rights.
A singular, nonpluralistic definition of the source of constitutional authority (the “sovereign”) tends to encourage polarization because it does not incorporate a multiplicity of interests, identities, and values. The constitutional definition of a unique and unified sovereign in the Bolivarian Constitution and its empirical identification with the popular sectors, at the expense of the middle and upper-classes, led to polarized conflicts between the two ideologically opposed groups that sought to represent the sovereign.
Second, a necessary but not sufficient condition to trigger open polarization was the prior existence of an underlying cleavage—in this case, high levels of poverty and socioeconomic inequality that revealed previously concealed social class polarization. Despite the absence of an open class struggle, Hugo Chávez’s discourse and the institutionalization of participatory democracy made explicit, and may have exacerbated, the existing social-class cleavage underlying the hidden polarization, as García Guadilla (2007, 2003) and Ellner (2003) have demonstrated.
The consequences of political-ideological polarization over the concept of democracy had logical consequences for the practice of democracy itself. In participatory democracy, the public space is privileged by political contenders to legitimate their competing sociopolitical projects and agendas. In practice, the social mobilization in public spaces of detractors and supporters of the Chavista project, who competed to be recognized as “the constitutional sovereign,” led to violent physical confrontations and fostered the creation of exclusionary spaces, narratives, and images about the “other.” Further, Stavrakakis (2018) stresses that populism can threaten democracy and set off pernicious polarization depending on whether it is inclusionary or exclusionary. One of the characteristics of Venezuela’s populism as it has developed in its second decade is its nominal inclusionary narrative of sharing economic and political resources with previously excluded sectors, coexisting with its actual exclusionary character (García-Guadilla 2018) that nourishes pernicious polarization. Particularly under President Maduro, most public policies are directed to include only those popular sectors allied ideologically with the government. Those not allied are excluded due to the scarcity of resources to feed populism. The middle and upper classes, who are associated with the opposition, are also excluded and considered not as a political adversary, but as the enemy to be eradicated through authoritarian decrees.
In Venezuela, the institutionalization of participatory democracy activated a form of polarization that went beyond the political realm and extended into everyday social interaction. In the presence of previous high levels of poverty and social inequity and exclusion, and of two ideologically antagonistic competing sociopolitical projects, participatory democracy could not produce a more democratic regime. Moreover, Venezuela’s conflict assumed the shape of an existential struggle, whose success was perceived by the citizenry as vital for the survival of their definition of democracy, their worldview, and their way of life.
In the short run, mild forms of political-ideological polarization may deepen democracy, as McCoy, Rahman, and Somer (2018) argue. But the Venezuelan case demonstrates that under high levels of poverty and social inequality, and with two antagonistic sociopolitical projects, more benign forms of polarization are not likely; instead, a severe or pernicious form of polarization that disrupts democracy will emerge.
Consequently, some of the requisites to avoid the emergence of pernicious polarization are: to reduce poverty and social inequality, maintain a certain degree of ideological compatibility between the two opposing sociopolitical projects and their expression in a clear constitutional framework that reflects plurality, and design participatory public policies in which all citizens, regardless of their differences, feel included.
Footnotes
NOTE:
The empirical information for analyzing polarization in Venezuela comes from numerous databases, documents, interviews, and other primary and secondary material that were collected for the research project, Participatory democracy and the constitutionalization of new citizenship and rationalities: Social actors and sociopolitical conflict in Venezuela under Chávez, FONACIT-USB (2001–2012). This research project was coordinated by María Pilar García-Guadilla. Additional databases were used for 2013–2018 (GAUS-USB 2013-20118). The theorization and conceptualization of polarization are based on 
.
Notes
María Pilar García-Guadilla is a professor of political and urban sociology at the Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela. She specializes in social movements, popular organizations, and democracy from below. Her most recent book is, Venezuela Polarized Politics: The Paradox of Direct Democracy under Chávez (Lynne Rienner 2017), coauthored with Ana Mallen.
Ana Mallen has researched Venezuelan politics for 15 years and has worked with communities in Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela. She coauthored the book, Venezuela Polarized Politics: The Paradox of Direct Democracy under Chávez (Lynne Rienner 2017), with María Pilar García-Guadilla.