Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy

Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy brings together a variety of perspectives on participation and democracy in Venezuela. An interdisciplinary group of contributors focuses on the everyday lives of Venezuelans, examining the forms of participation that have emerged in communal councils, cultural activities, blogs, community media, and several other forums. The essays validate many of the critiques of democracy under Chávez, as well as much of the praise. They show that while government corporatism and clientelism are constant threats, the forms of political and cultural participation discussed are creating new discourses, networks, and organizational spaces—for better and for worse. With open yet critical minds, the contributors seek to analyze Venezuela’s Bolivarian democratic experience through empirical research. In doing so, they reveal a nuanced process, a richer and more complex one than is conveyed in international journalism and scholarship exclusively focused on the words and actions of Hugo Chávez.ContributorsCarolina Acosta-AlzuruJulia BuxtonLuis Duno Gottberg Sujatha FernandesMaría Pilar García-GuadillaKirk A. HawkinsDaniel HellingerMichael E. JohnsonLuis E. LanderMargarita López-MayaElizabeth Gackstetter NicholsCoraly PaganGuillermo RosasNaomi SchillerDavid SmildeAlejandro Velasco

“Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.” - Oliver Heath, Journal of Latin American Studies, “[T]he authors of this volume provide rich material that sheds light on the novelty of the strategies pursued by Chavista leaders and the knotty issues brought to the fore by their initiatives.” - Steve Ellner, Latin American Politics and Society, “Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy makes it clear that, while transforming the political landscape, the Chávez era also embodies important continuities with the country’s recent past. The serious problems that the country faces and the social movements that support Chávez did not emerge overnight; they are rooted in the inequities of the oil economy that took hold during the twentieth century. This book is a must read for anybody trying to make sense of the ongoing process of change that is remaking Venezuela.”—Miguel Tinker Salas, author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela, “This book evaluates Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela with a clear eye. Through nuanced attention to new empirical research in a rapidly changing context—who speaks, what people believe, who decides, and how power works—it offers a framework for analyzing the intertwined democratic and nondemocratic aspects of politics as it is practiced and lived. This multisited approach—looking from neighborhoods to media, activists to government institutions—could be applied with equal success to the postrevolutionary regimes of Cárdenas or Castro, the populist governments of Vargas or Perón, and the liberal democracies of the present.”—Jeffrey W. Rubin, Boston University, “Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.”

David Smilde is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia and the president of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Qualitative Sociology and the author of Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism.Daniel Hellinger is Professor of Political Science at Webster University in St. Louis and the former president of the Venezuelan Studies Section. He is the author of Comparative Politics of Latin America: Democracy at Last? and a co-editor of Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict.