Dragon in the tropics: Hugo Chávez and the political economy by Javier Corrales

By Javier Corrales

In view that he was once first elected in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez Frias has reshaped a frail yet still pluralistic democracy right into a semi-authoritarian regime—an consequence completed with spectacularly excessive oil source of revenue and frequent electoral help. This eye-opening publication illuminates probably the most sweeping and unforeseen political alterations in modern Latin the US. in accordance with greater than fifteen years’ event in discovering and writing approximately Venezuela, Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold have crafted a finished account of ways the Ch?vez regime has remodeled the kingdom, with a specific specialize in its political transformation. all through, they take factor with traditional causes. First, they argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an establishment was once to not blame for the increase of chavismo. moment, they assert that the nation's monetary diseases weren't attributable to neoliberalism. in its place they blame different components, together with a dependence on oil, which triggered macroeconomic volatility; political celebration fragmentation, which prompted infighting; govt mismanagement of the banking predicament, which ended in extra centralization of energy; and the Asian predicament of 1997, which devastated Venezuela's economic system while that Ch?vez ran for president. it really is might be at the function of oil that the authors take maximum factor with triumphing opinion. they don't dispute that dependence on oil can generate political and financial distortions—the “resource curse” or “paradox of lots” arguments—but they counter that oil on my own fails to provide an explanation for Ch?vez’s upward thrust. as an alternative they unmarried out a vulnerable framework of tests and balances that allowed the administrative department to extract oil rents and distribute them to the population. the true perpetrator at the back of Ch?vez’s luck, they write, used to be the asymmetry of political energy.

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Additional info for Dragon in the tropics: Hugo Chávez and the political economy of revolution in Venezuela

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At first, Chávez was aided by the pervasive anti-party, anti–status quo feeling prevailing in Venezuela. After 2004 Chávez was aided by oil money. To understand Chávez’s electoral fortunes since 2004, it helps to clarify the symbiotic relationship between political clientelist spending and declining checks and balances institutions. As the effectiveness of these institutions declines in an improving economy, the incumbent enters the enviable position of being able to increase spending while making it more discretionary.

For the 2006 presidential elections, the OAS provided CNE with technical assistance to reduce the possibility of tracing voting records through fingerprints, but the opposition pressed for more changes. The government agreed to remove fingerprint machines from certain polling stations, but retained them in densely populated, poorer communities. indd 30 11/17/10 9:21 PM Rise of a Hybrid Regime, 1999–2009╇╇ 31 fingerprint machines in these key polls, the government was deviously playing a “psychological” game: encouraging people to question the secrecy of the vote, which would boost abstention rates among opposition voters.

Chávez’s twisted response to this legal argument was that since the item to be voted on was a modified version of the defeated item—term limits of all elected officers, not just the presidency— the constitutional prohibition was inapplicable. Second, Chávez was also responding to a problem that became quite serious in the 2008 elections: internal divisions within his party that came to the fore in the PSUV’s primary contests to select candidates for mayors and governors. indd 37 11/17/10 9:21 PM 38 Rise of a Hybrid Regime, 1999–2009 of Chávez’s chosen candidates, and this discord led to major defections and caused chavismo to run disunited (that is, offering more than one candidate for governor) in eleven states (the opposition ran disunited in only five states).

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