Goodbye to Venezuelan exceptionalism -- Strong Parties and Lame Ducks by Michael Coppedge / Paper Tigers and Minotaurs by Moises Naim / Tres Entrevistas Con Andres Velasquez by Farruco Sesto / La Rebellion de Los Angeles by Angela Zago / and others

Levine, Daniel H

For most of the last 30 years, Venezuelans and many of their Latin American neighbors shared a sense of Venezuelan exceptionalism. Abundant natural resources, great wealth, mobility and rising levels of living, social openness and democratic politics, strong political parties, political stability and a military under control combined with the absence of deep linguistic or ethnic divisions to reinforce the notion that Venezuela had either solved the problems plaguing other Latin American countries or was somehow exempt in the first place. When Venezuela's successes were set against regional tendencies to authoritarianism or civil war, satisfied, if not smug, feelings of exceptionalism became all the stronger.

Today all this seems like a dream. Exceptionalism has been replaced by what many in Venezuela call the latinamericanizacion of their country. Compounded of economic decline, inflation, and currency swings that make for obsession with the dollar, institutional collapse, political decay and a resurgence of personalist politics, growing crime, civil violence, conspiracies and military coups, the latinamericanization of Venezuela has replaced pride and hopes for the future with despair, unfocused anger, and a sense of betrayal.

This shift from exceptionalism to latinamericanization(1) has sparked searching and painful debates about what ails the country, and what can and must be done. Because the search for answers is also a search for villains, these debates have a strong and growing edge of bitterness. The issues at stake are complex and multi-dimensional, and can be grasped from many angles: from technical reforms of the electoral system, macroeconomic studies or work on specific movements, parties, leaders and presidencies to broad historical sweeps. But no matter how the issues are framed, a few underlying questions give unity to the whole debate.

Was Venezuela ever really exceptional, or was that sense of difference little more than the temporary glow of oil money?(2) Can the current "crisis" (certainly a much abused term in Venezuela today) be attributed to inherent faults in the political and economic system, or will more proximate, short-term explanations do the job? How can we best grasp the sources and possible impact of projects for reform that have been under discussion in Venezuela since the mid-1980s? Finally, what is the future likely to hold for Venezuelans and for the country's core institutions? Can the economy rebound and growing poverty and inequality be reversed? Can political parties be rebuilt, the military contained once again, and political legitimacy reconstructed? How can these difficult tasks be accomplished? And how can we know if they have?

Before getting into particulars, a brief sketch is in order of the system in its "golden age." What did Venezuela look like in the years when it seemed immune to Latin America's chronic social and political ills?(3) Most observers cite (1) consistent economic growth with improved equity, (2) a centralized state paid for by steadily rising oil revenues, and (3) exceptionally strong political parties that penetrated and controlled organized social life from top to bottom all across the national territory. Pacts and agreements negotiated by the parties knit the system together and were implemented on a day-to-day basis through a vast network of formal and informal contacts. Although bipolar party competition is often cited as a key, in fact it only emerges in the 1970s and is best understood not as a cause but, rather, as a byproduct of other changes.

These brief comments suggest the main lines of the rules of the game as played in the golden age: in economic terms, strong currency, low inflation, growth, and a dominant role for the central state as regulator and distributor of oil-based revenues; in politics, a centralized state, a dominant center, strongly organized, national parties that monopolize political action and control social movements (trade unions are a prime example), a professional political class and a subordinated military; and in social terms, great mobility (social and geographic), mass education, and gradual homogenization of national cultural and organizational life.

The preceding sketch of core traits and operative rules underscores the traumatic effect of a series of events marking Venezuela's passage from exceptionalism to latinamericanization, The first was Black Friday (18 February 1983) when he currency collapsed, initiating the present period of depreciation, economic stagnation, and inflation. Six years later came the bloody urban riots touched off on 27 February 1989 (27-F), as a spontaneous response to the new government's structural adjustment package. Third came the attempted coups of 1992, on 4 February (4-F) and 27 November (27-N), the first such in three decades. Further shocks were produced by the impeachment and removal from office of President Carlos Andres Perez (the so-called "coup of civil society") in May 1993, followed by the December 1993 election of former President Rafael Caldera, who abandoned the party he himself had founded the Comite de Organzacion Politca Electoral Independlente or COPEI) and ran a brilliant campaign to win a 4-way race on an explicitly anti-party platform. At each of these points, a key pillar of the system was undermined or removed: (1) economic strength (Black Friday); (2) social pacts, control, and civil order (27-F); (3) a depoliticized and controlled military (4-F and 27-N); and (4) unquestioned executive dominance and party hegemony (the downfall of Perez and the election of Caldera). These events are drawn together, and their impact magnified, by long-term growth in public skepticism and disaffection coupled with a surge of associational life independent of parties and party-linked networks.

These works under review consider the issues from varying perspectives, bringing rich and diverse data to bear on the task of making sense of Venezuela's crisis and figuring out where it may lead. The most ambitious effort is Urbaneja's PUEBLO Y PETROLEO, a sweeping historical interpretation of how Venezuela came to be the way it is and what that means for any effort at political and institutional reform. Moises Naim's PAPER TIGERS AND MINOTAURS situates economic decay and failed reform efforts in the context of a telling analysis of the collapse of state institutions and the utter inability of political leaders to understand that the game had changed. Michael Coppedge's STRONG PARTIES AND LAME DUCKS stresses the peril of excessive party control (in his terms, "partyarchy") for the quality of democracy. Recent collections of interviews with leaders of La Causa R (TRES ENTREVISTAS CON ANDRES VELASQUEZ and PABLO MEDINA EN ENTREVISTA) provide valuable insight into the thinking of a political alternative that has grown sharply in the past few years (Schaposnik, 185; Daniels, 1993; Mueller Rojas, 1992).(4) Although systematic, well-grounded work on the military remain scarce,(5) Angela Zago's LA REBELION DE LOS ANGELES provides a sample of the remarkable hero worship given to the group of young officers who led the coup of 4-F.(6)

Diego Bautista Urbaneja's PUEBLO Y PETROLEO EN LA POLITICA VENEZOLANA DEL SIGLO XX is an ambitious effort to rethink the ideological bases of modern Venezuelan politics. In a formal sense, this is a history of ideas. Urbaneja directs attention to contending visions of the people and the state and relates these to the impact petroleum has had on the formation of the nation. Underlying themes in this history are isolated in ways that point to central challenges and possible paths for the future. Urbaneja identifies three basic political projects or designs for political order in Venezuela: liberalism, dominant in the latter half of the nineteenth century; positivism, the controlling ideology of military regimes through to 1958; and the democratic project, born in the 1940s, which, in revised form, has set the tone for society and politics ever since. The author addresses common questions to each: what are the core working concepts of state and people that structure priorities, norms of action, and standard operating procedures? What are their characteristic strengths and weaknesses? What claim to legitimacy is advanced? Why does it find a hearing? With whom? What do these elements tell us about why regimes get established and how they decay and fail? Throughout, ideas are skillfully grounded in social and historical context: at issue are not ideas in the abstract, but ideas in action.

This rich and complex book defies easy summary, but the basic argument (spun out in 22 chapters plus introduction and conclusion) is as follows. The "people" of the liberal project (as advanced in the Federal Wars of the mid-19th century) were a minority of active citizens whose vision of the nation was marginal to the reality of a country marked by illiteracy, isolation, poverty, and violence (p.75). Reacting to the dissolution and failure of liberalism, positivists argued that the "people" were incapable of independent choice and action. The only hope for peace and stability lay in matching political forms to the real nature of the people--a nature molded by race, history, and geography for obedience to strong leaders. The liberal state promoted change, but the positivist state focused, first and foremost, on order. There was little interest in economic growth as such: security and peace were the controlling goals, and the regime of Juan Vicente Gomez (1908-1995) ensured both. Oil transformed the positivist program by providing resources and a logic for state action. These found expression in the gradual creation of new state institutions, but it was only with the death of Gomez that the central state really began to grow.

The democratic program emerged in the 1980s and 1940s, giving voice to the profound social changes petroleum was bringing to Venezuela: migration, urbanization, growing education, and related experiences that, together, made possible what Urbaneja calls the "formation of the people as a real subject" (p.125) for the first time in the country's history. In the democratic vision, the issue is not to create a people (liberalism), or to adapt institutions to their inherited character (positivism) but, rather, to express the needs and fulfill the rights of a people as they really exist. The people have rights, are capable of judgment and action, and the state is obliged to work in their favor. State expansion is justified in the name of serving the people.

The democratic program was articulated by Accion Democratica (AD), which gave organized political expression to the Venezuela then emerging in those years. AD made itself the dominant political force of the second half of this century and established a model of successful political organization. Urbaneja explores the early years of the democratic program, its conflict with positivism (defended by the military and their allies), and its consolidation (in revised form) after 1958. His chapter on "Pueblo y Programa Democritica" [The People and the Democratic Program] provides a brilliant assessment of the underpinnings of this program, and of how its logic contains the seeds of the current crisis.

For Urbaneja, the democratic program in Venezuela operates with two concepts of "the people" at work in Venetuelan democracy: the people as sovereign (the electors) and the people organized in classes and groups. He refines this distinction by reference to three capabilities: generic (expressed in political choice); pluralist (expressed through membership in specific groups); and technocratic (expressed in particular abilities and expert knowledge). Political parties knit these elements together by channelling, magnifying, and (above all) controlling the resulting political capacities. Political parties (especially AD) were critical to the consolidation of democracy, using their powerful position astride social groups and political processes of all kinds to mute conflict and enforce common political rules. Their overwhelming power, in effect, reduced citizenship to its generic dimension, stunting pluralist and technocratic capabilities to the point of forcing their expression outside the existing party system.(7)

The great power of party organizations and their ability to dominate political and social life generally found expression in systems of "social negotiation" and "democratic planning" that recognize, absorb, and control interests within parties, which are then free to negotiate deals among themselves. Stability is ensured and benefits allocated among organized groups in ways designed to avoid disorder and open conflict, thus removing a classic pretext for military claims to power. Urbaneja describes the working rules of this system as (a) obsession with consensus, (b) aversion to conflict, and (c) a populist accounting that

consists in adjusting the balance of victories and defeats among members of the alliance to fit each sector's expectation. Those who lose in today's conflicts must win tomorrow's (p.266).

Income from oil underwrote these arrangements and, for a long time, provided sufficient resources for distribution, thus avoiding the pain of redistribution.(8)

Though stability was achieved, it came at a high price that tended to escalate over time. Urbaneja argues (chapters 17-19) that the combined effects of obsession with stability, aversion to conflict, and pluralist accounting worked to freeze political arrangements at the very moment when the state began its dramatic expansion (paid for by the oil boom) and society found itself pushed and pulled in new directions. An opportunity was missed to reform and rejuvenate the political system by loosening the bonds of party control, decentralizing the state, and opening channels for the organized expression of the new interests, groups, and capabilities being created in society at large. Of course, reform is a hard sell when things seem to be going well. Facing apparent prosperity, popular support, and social peace, why should any organized group give up anything? But Urbaneja's point is that these years of plenty are the very years in which irreparable decay set in:

Crushed by the weight of their own bureaucratic gigantism, adept at populist accounting and electoral calculations, and oiled by the logic of their internal social relations, the parties filed to renew their own channels or internal practices. They kept on operating with apparent normality, but in fact they had lost the ability to represent society at large (p.339).

The decay of the parties was matched by atrophy in party-related organizations (like unions) and by growing reluctance on the part of new groups (such as neighborhood associations) to have much to do with parties.

The very groups that so enriched the pluralist world could see and learn the lesson: it was not wise to come under the wing of a party...so new groups emerged outside the parties and worked to forge new kinds of ties with the slate (p.345).

The state itself began to show signs of deterioration, buried under a host of demands that it lacks the will and capacity to meet. The system collapsed under its own weight.

Urbaneja does not confine himself to historical analysis: he vigorously advances proposals for change. In his view, to be viable, any reform (regardless of specifics) must be committed to expand the capacity of the average citizen to form judgments and take action. In practice this means decentralizing the state, democratizing associational life, and reducing the role of parties.

So this is the basic agenda: rearticulate the three capabilities inherent in the concept of the people that undergirds the democratic program and which must give it strength in the years to come. This will require redefining the relations among the vehicles through which these capabilities reach the public stage: the state, the world of social organizations, and the political parties (p.437).

Urbaneja's views reflect those of a broad-based reform constituency that began to grow and find expression in the mid-1990s. New groups found a place here, among them neighborhood associations, feminists, ecological groups, human rights organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and insurgent unions. Together, they constituted what Venezuelans soon began to refer to as "civil society," a loose collection of organizations and tendencies that, at first glance, have little in common apart from the fact that they are not state-related. The concerns of this broad constituency were reflected in the work of COPRE (Comdn prestdencalpara la Refomza del Estdo) which began, around this time, to issue an impressive series of documents, programs and plans for institutional transformation.(9) Early tangible steps for reform came with the independent election of mayors and governors (1983), followed by moves to implement decentralization by turning a growing list of functions over to the states.

These observations point to the ironies of Venezuela's crisis: it is a crisis made worse by economic decline, a crisis pushed to the limits by institutional rigidity, but also a crisis played out in the midst of reform. Crisis brings not only danger but opportunity as well; the danger of violence and institutional collapse is balanced by the opportunity to build a new kind of political order for a society whose evolution has made the old order no longer viable. The parameters of both crisis and possible reform are brought sharply into focus by Naim's study of the political economy of the second Carlos Andres Perez (CAP) government and by Coppedge's work on AD.(10) Moiss Naim's PAPER TIGERS AND MINOTAURS offers an insider's view of the origins and travails of policy and institutional reform under the Perez administration.(11) Naim provides a valuable source book on Venezuela's economic decay and on the mind-set of policymakers bent on reform. Unfortunately, analysis is also colored by apologetics that occasionally border on the simplistic. To Naim, economic reform was urgent: if only everyone had realized its pressing nature as clearly as the small band of technocrats in charge of policy, problems would have been much reduced. The apologetic tone is set in an "Introduction" by Jeffrey Sachs (well known proponent of "shock therapies"), who states that

one's first impression on reading this important study is to marvel at the political bravery and steadfastness of the reformers, and second is to groan at their seemingly impossible task (p.7).

This reviewer's first impression was more complex: a mix of dismay at the extent of economic and institutional decay and wonder at the naivete of reformers who thought change would be simple, and who are quick to blame everyone but themselves (mostly "vested interests") for snags, delays, or reverses.

Naim documents the double-edged nature of the crisis. In economic terms, since the fading of the oil boom of the 1970s, Venezuela has experienced steady disinvestment and economic decay." Chapters 2 and 3 detail what the author calls a "reverse Midas touch," visible in economic decline, expanding poverty, and sharp increases in inequality. Resources were wasted, reserves were depleted, bad decisions were made, inefficiency reigned supreme and corruption had a rich, open field. Decline turned to crisis in 1988 and 1989 as a result of exhausted reserves, a surging budget deficit, debt burdens, and a looming collapse in the value of the currency.(13) These elements gained added weight by the absolute inability of the state to deliver services, collect taxes, or manage its own institutions. The price control system was a metaphor for the whole: Naim shows (pp.34-36) how the very complexity and reach of price controls made it totally unworkable, leading to shortages, tensions, and public anger. The depth and extent of the crisis explains the policy turnaround (known as El Gran Viraje, or "the big shift") that Perez undertook. Naim makes a convincing argument that the only alternative to a genuine shift in policy was hyperinflation and disaster on the model of Alan Garcia's Peru.

Reflecting on the problems of El Gran Viraje, Naim sees that Perez misread popular expectations, exaggerated the ability of institutions, and misled himself about the ability of party networks to manage dissent. But the problems are deeper than Naim is willing to acknowledge. Any project that entails a basic reorientation of economic policies, programs, and benefits cannot expect other institutions to continue unaffected. Institutions are not separate and static. In any case, Perez and his economic team deliberately isolated themselves from the party,(14) and it is at least worth asking how one can expect a party to save a program if the party is seen as part of the problem--and is marginalized from the beginning.

Though Naim acknowledges that the program was very costly ["this may have been the most severe adjustment in labor incomes of any country in Latin America" (p.60)], he agrees that it paid off in a series of early macro-economic successes that included growth, investment, and a drop in inflation. In short, a classic case of the economy doing well, but the people not doing so well.(15) Early successes were, in any case, soon undermined by growing fiscal deficit (p.76), institutional decay, and a collapse in delivery systems for basic public goods like education, health, water, transport, and security (p.81). The deep public anger and resentment at decline in the quality of life, which had burst into view with 27-F returned with the coup of 4-F which, as we shall see, found wide support. As Naim properly notes, although the coup failed in strictly military terms, the ensuing consequences were tremendous. The opposition converged, the government was revealed to be isolated and ever weaker, and the economy took another nosedive (p.106).

Naim's account forces us to ask why reaction to structural adjustment was so much more extreme and violent in Venezuela than elsewhere? One obvious answer is that other cases (for example, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, or Peru) had, in some sense, touched bottom, so that structural adjustment seemed an acceptable (or at least unavoidable) alternative to hyperinflation, violence, and long term decay. In Venezuela, however, the common belief was (and still is) that the country is rich. Economic problems, therefore, must be the result of deceit and corruption.(16) To be sure, there is corruption in Venezuela, but the intensity of public obsession with corruption makes sense only in terms of a search for villains and scapegoats. Naim argues that the real villain is neither corruption, nor the military, nor the parties--not even the media, a target of much of the author's criticism. Instead, he locates the root cause of the problem in the institutional devastation of the state. The profound deterioration of all public institutions had rendered the state incapable of responding adequately to the many demands of the moment (p.115).

Must Venezuela touch bottom (wherever that is) before undertaking the kinds of reforms that Naim regards as inevitable? Bottom may be deep. Economic decay and political decay have continued apace. Under the interim presidency of Ramon J. Velasquez and the elected government of Rafael Caldera, massive scandals led to the collapse of a growing number of major banks and insurance companies. The bailout strained the budget, expanded the deficit, and sparked a sharp drop in the currency. Exchange and price controls were reimposed, with severe penalties for infringing the rules. These tough measures contrasted notably with Caldera's pardon of the few officers remaining in jail from the attempted coups of 1992. Many drew the obvious conclusion that mounting a coup carries less risk and imposes fewer penalties than trading dollars outside the official system. Bottom looks deep indeed.

Is economic reform viable without political reform? The question is not an idle one and vexes governments and planners the world over. Naim states that combining new economics with the old politics was "the government's big mistake." Reliance on hollow institutions and failure to create even the semblance of effective communications undid the best of plans. But this is ingenuous. The political problems of the Perez administration involved more than a failure of communication, even more than a collapse of service delivery systems. The Perez administration may have called on the old politics, but it never really practiced politics old or new. It relied on technical measures, insulated itself from parties, and was done in by self-inflicted wounds. Putting a good spin on the numbers will not set things right.(17)

If touching bottom is in some sense a prerequisite for building a consensus for change, is political reform viable in the short term? A sense of the difficulties of political reform, and the obstacles and opposition it is likely to encounter comes out clearly from Michael Coppedge's analysis of "partyarchy" and its problems. The term is adapted from Robert Dahl's well known definition of polyarchy as rule by minorities, in which pluralism guarantees effective representation to a collection of organized interests. Partyarchy, then, is "the degree to which political parties interfere with the fulfillment of the requirement for polyarchy" (p.19). The indictment is lengthy: the theory and practice of partyarchy in Venezuela undermines the quality of democracy by controlling all nominations, constraining public choice through closed party list ballots, penetrating organized interests and subjecting them to party control, and imposing bloc voting on legislatures which then lose any possible role in decisionmaking, becoming, instead, mere "staging grounds for party competition, a puppet theater with the parties pulling the strings" (p.13). Problems created by partyarchy are compounded by presidentialism which, by definition, encourages factionalism, whose effects are then exaggerated by the way partyarchy draws conflicts and decisionmaking inside party structures. The combined impact of presidentialism and partyarchy is magnified by the rule of no immediate reelection. Presidents are lame ducks from the day they take office; factionalism has a clear field from day one. In this atmosphere, partyarchy and presidentialism combine with deadly effect on democracy or, more precisely, on its quality.

Quality is a word that appears throughout this book. The author finds quality of choice and quality of democracy itself to be radically undermined by the combination of partyarchy and presidential rule. He insists that the quality of democracy has important long-term consequences for its stability. Low quality (in our terms: institutions that are frozen and out of touch) produces institutional decay and growing disaffection, independent of economic difficulties. Coppedge argues that most writing on Venezuela by North American scholars remained wedded to an optimistic view of the country long after the bases for that image had disappeared. Refusing to acknowledge the system's inherent problems, they missed the emergence of civil (and later military) opposition. The trade-off between stability and democracy had become perilously weighted toward the former (p.39).

STRONG PARTIES AND LAME DUCKS opens with three chapters that, together, lay the groundwork for the author's view of how partyarchy and presidentialism privilege a kind of intra-party politics and power relations that sets the tone for the nation at large. The author's basic idea comes from a survey of AD leadership, and, throughout this book, AD stands in for parties and the party system generally. This is not necessarily an unreasonable choice: after all, AD has dominated national politics over the last half century and provided the organizational model for most other parties. Coppedge argues that AD is really three parties in one: a policy party, a power party, and an electoral party. The policy party makes decisions about doctrine, program, legislative behavior, and relations with the government. The electoral party does the work of fighting and winning elections. The power party selects party leadership and is the scene of contests for control over all or parts of the party organization (p.15). Chapters 4,5, and 6 examine each of these in turn, and the book concludes with a chapter on the "strengths and weaknesses" of Venezuelan democracy.

The three middle chapters provide rich data on the inner workings of AD and on how leaders understand the nature of the party. Looking at the policy pay, Coppedge finds that executive dominance in Venezuela is "beyond any standard of responsible government" (p.66), a standard left unspecified here. Congress is unproductive,(18) the executive is overbearing, and, in any case, each has its functions usurped by AD's Comite Ejecutivo Nacional (CEN). The subtext of this argument is that AD has no policy any more. The party has lost its identity and lost its way.(19)

The discussion of internal factions and the struggle for control over the party apparatus dedicates considerable space (pp.128 ff.) to why the "ins" and "outs" have come into conflict. The obvious short answer is that "ins" have what the "outs" want, but, for Coppedge, such factional conflict is anomalous given the more "logical" choice of supporting the government and winning elections. The author's dedication to his idea of what a party ought to be gets in the way of making sense of why it is the way it is. Factionalism and division make for a "net loss in quality" (p.57) and, in any case, are irrational since they lower the party's total vote. There is no place for the irrational in this neat scheme of things. Looking at policy and power struggles, Coppedge asks if factionalism can improve representation where informal representation is "deeply flawed." He responds that factionalism only benefits representation if factions are well-organized and distinctive, giving voters a clear and unequivocal choice. Because parties are so controlling in Venezuela,

most of the responsibility for representation falls to the party system; and with two leading parties that are barely distinguishable, factions are expected to assume some of that responsibility. If they do not, the quality of Venezuelan democracy leaves much to desired (p.141).

The force of these arguments declines when one realizes that clear-cut factions and organizational patterns of the sort that Coppedge appears to favor probably exist only in the definitional sections of political science textbooks. But it is unreasonable to set ideal standards and then take any deviation from these standards as a sign of the poverty of representation.

At times, Coppedge seems amazed and shocked to discover that things are not as they should be, not even as they seem. Corruption is rampant, factions are issueless, not principled, public debate is wasted on trivialities, and so forth. The tone is set in the first chapter, which frames the issues in deductive and narrow ways: conditions for democracy are listed, the system is weighed against these conditions, and deficiencies are noted. But the author's deductive theorizing occasionally runs afoul of his political disappointment. Representation, surely a critical issue for the theory and practice of democracy, is a useful case in point. As we have seen, Coppedge believes that partyarchy undermines the quality of representation by, in effect, substituting party for all other channels. Party leaders may in fact be elected, but no matter: in this view, non-party members have no representation at all. He states that

even if it is appropriate to exclude the opposition from most government decisions, granting the right to rule to party members excludes party voters who are not members, and who usually outnumber the members. Party membership is a narrow base on which to build a claim to legitimate rule....[partyarchy means that] ordinary citizens are deprived of the opportunity to organize effectively around certain issues: class, sectoral, and regional interest are subordinated to partisan concerns; and the political agenda all too regularly consists of trivial partisan bickering rather than important issues (pp.45-46).

Even active, involved party members are marginalized, because the hierarchical quality of party structures frees leadership from all constraint, making democracy available only to the tiny minority that join actively in internal party politics. In the author's view, "real" interests are subordinated to "trivial partisan bickering" to the detriment of democratic ideals.

This will not do as a theory of representation. Indeed, there is no theory of representation here, little place for representation at all. The survival of the system is reduced to little more than an act of will (aided by deceit) on the part of party leaders. However, these leaders were not only chosen within the party apparatus, they were also elected by the public. Before dismissing this side of their role as irrelevant, one needs a better sense of the people with whom they are supposedly out of touch. What do they want? What do they reject? How (if at all) do they hold leaders accountable?

The whole analysis is stimulating but misspecified. Given the author's concern for the quality of representation (mediated and distorted, in his account, by partyarchy), it seems unduly narrow to focus on AD and not on the society striving for representation. As things stand, we hear the voices and feel the efforts of new groups only at second or third hand.(20) The whole discussion focuses too much on the parties themselves and not enough on social or institutional forces working either to change existing rules of the game or, simply, to ignore them in the present juncture. Coppedge provides little sense of the potential (or actual) impact of electoral reforms already in place, such as the uncoupling of local and national elections, the direct election of mayors and governors, or the slow move away from party list voting (for details, see Molina, 1991; and Levine and Kornblith, 1995). These have already had visible effects on the structure of power within parties, and on relations among them.(21)

Coppedge believes that presidentialism is even worse than partyarchy. In his view, many of the problems that plague Venezuelan politics would be non-issues in a parliamentary system where "there is no turnover for the sake of turnover, no lame-duck phenomenon, and no polarization between ins and outs" (p. 167). Whether or not this rosy view of parliamentary rule has any basis in fact, the prospects for a shift to parliamentary rule anywhere in Latin America are low, if not absolutely nil, so, in a real sense, the question is moot. The point is to rebuild what is, not to set impossible conditions. Coppedge has fallen into a trap of his own making. "Perhaps", he states,

if the current regime is overthrown and its failure is closely connected with stalemate, the next democratic regime will consider parliamentarism in drawing up a new constitution. But in the absence of such a major upheaval, this particular reform is unlikely to be adopted (p. 168).

Quite a hope! This statement is symptomatic of the problems of the final chapter and of the book as a whole. Reforms are needed, but none of the reforms on the table go far enough (p. 166). In any event, the villains of the piece are so entrenched, and so unlikely to change, that stalemate, frustration, and instability are inevitable.(22) The author's analysis is too narrowly pitched to be a satisfactory guide either to problems or to solutions. The argument Coppedge advances for the autonomy of political variables (and his critique of presidentialism as well) draw on themes that are now very much in vogue in political science. Though it is proper to focus on political variables, the specific frame of analysis advanced here fails to satisfy. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Coppedge is making the same mistake that Urbaneja claims plagued Venezuela's 13th-century Liberals, who believed that simply creating new institutions would solve social and political problems.

Insufficient attention is given to the broader context of state-society relations, and a number of explicitly political matters are also marginalized. These include the sagging credibility of the electoral system and growing allegations of fraud. The author does not acknowledge the potential of reforms already under way, and alternative projects for reform--advanced, for example, by social movements or parties (like La Causa R)--get only the most perfunctory of nods. However, all these emerged before the edge of crisis sharpened, and all have made a way for themselves despite institutional rigidities and fierce opposition from the established political class.

So far, no good, general accounts exist of the origins and character of new social movements in Venezuela. Indeed, the whole theme of "civil society" is only now beginning to catch the attention of scholars involved in studying the country's politics and organized social life. Substantial work on La Causa R is also yet to come, though valuable insights are provided in Farruco Sesto's Cwo volumes of interviews with Andres Velasquez (governor of Bolivar state and presidential candidate for La Casa R) and with Pablo Medina, party founder and general secretary. La Causa R Radical Cause) has its origins in the divisions of the Communist party that also gave birth to the better known Movimento al Socialismo (MAS), now a coalition partner with President Caldera (Ellner, 1988).

From the beginning, the guiding spirit of La Causa R was Alfredo Maneiro, who, with a small group of supporters, rejected the decision of the MAS to adapt to the political system by (a) organizing a party on the AD model, and (b) competing in elections and organizations on the same terms as all parties (for documentation of Maneiro's views, see Maneiro, 1986). Instead, Causa R (or simply "la Causa" as militants call it) focused on constructing a movement with three initial bases: a neighborhood movement in the bamilos of Caracas; a university movement; and sustained effort at working class organization in the steel mills of Guayana. The first two failed, but, despite setbacks and reverses, the party found lasting success among the steelworkers and parlayed that into a political base in the state of Bolivar. The party was lucky to recruit a dynamic young leader (Andres Velasquez) whose abilities were soon displayed in difficult battles to displace AD from the union and, ultimately, from political control. The party's fortunes have risen along with his--first to governor of Bolivar (elected in 1989 and overwhelmingly reelected in 1992), and then to a strong finish in the 1993 elections with almost 22% of the vote for president and a substantial representation in Congress.

The political project of La Causa R rests on a radical (in the sense of root and branch) condemnation of the political class, an uncompromising refusal to collaborate in any way with the system, and on a promise of good government grounded in popular participation. In a 1993 interview, Pablo Medina made the case in typically blunt terms. Asked about the role of COPRE and the reforms it has designed and advanced, he stated:

To hell with COPRE. Venezuela has to be democratized from the bottom up. It is not a question of some enlightened group doing everything from above. That was the failure of COPRE--the same elite as always, the clever, the virtuous, deciding for the country....Democracy has to be brought to the people, municipalizing democracy and democratizing the municipality. The whole country has to be filled with democracy (Portada, 1993).

TRES ENTREVISTAS CON ANDRES VELASQUEZ presents transcripts of interviews conducted in 1986, 1983, and 1991. Discussions touch on Velasquez' personal history, union struggles and political campaigns, and on the experience of being governor. Velasquez provides telling insights into his (and La Causa Rs) notion of what ails Venezuela and how politics and social life can be made better. He sees La Causa as more movement than party and considers this a virtue in a country stifled by the power of party organization, where, in his view, the CEN of AD has been lord and master of the country for decades. A shared "anxiety about the decay of the country" draws supporters together,

and for this reason, we are the most atypical party you can imagine. More than a party we are a social movement, or to be more precise, a political project. For this reason, as the country deteriorates and the quality of life diminishes, interests are fused and groups join together. In that same measure, we also draw together as part of this movement (p. 127).

In the early union struggles, Velasquez and others took issues and specific proposals on a regular basis to workers at the plant gates. hey extend this participatory model to government with a multitude of forums for public discussion and debate. The guiding ideal is not dialogue between the people and the government but, rather, that "the whole country participates in governing itself" (p. 183). "We want the people to govern: not to govern for the people, but that the people themselves govern. That is the key" (p. 117). Regardless of the issue at hand, the principle holds because, in the final analysis,

the government one dreams of is a government with a highly politicized people, a people engaged in what I would call a violent process of culural transformation, violent in the sense of drastic, radical. This is extremely important. This is what should absorb the bulk of the government's energies, this culural transformation. Up to now Venezuela's political class has been content with half-hearted measures, limited reforms (unproceso de medis tintas, con refomzas de panos calientes) based on the notion that the people are not ready for great changes. And this is a lie (p. 235).

La Causa R sees itself as embodying the Venezuela of the 1990s just as AD did for the Venezuela of the 1940s. The country has changed, and now is the time for a new voice, to speak for new groups, above all for those ignored, shunted aside, or simply repelled by corruption and inefficiency.(23) The ultimate goal is a government of the workers, which, in this case, means not a classic dictatorship of the proletariat but, rather, a government by and for working people: ordinary men and women who rely on public transport to get to work, send their children to public schools, struggle to stretch reduced incomes, and feel the decay of the country in every phase of their lives, every day. The combination of a no-holds-barred denunciation of corrupt political elites and a system rigid with inequality and injustice with steady promotion of participation and grassroots democracy has been potent and appealing. The party's surging electoral fortunes have drawn strength from these elements, as well as from an image of incorruptibility, patriotism, and straight-talking.

Not everyone who denounces the ills of the current system sees more democracy as the cure. Two attempted coups in the space of ten months attest to the renewed appeal of military intervention in a country where many comforted themselves with the thought that the armed forces had been permanently marginalized. In historical perspective, that marginalization was an unusual and unexpected accomplishment. Until mid-century, Venezuela had been the country of caudillos and military rule par excellence. With the consolidation of democracy after 1958, a half-century of struggle for hegemony between political parties and the military appeared to have been resolved once and or all in favor of the civilians. The resurgence of military activism in politics, and the ardent public response to the group of young officers who led the coup of 4-F call us to serious reflection. The decay of political parties opened the doors, and a generation of officers in search of a mission pushed on through to claim a place of leadership as rightfully theirs.

The most striking aspect of civil-military relations in Venezuela in recent years is not the return of military ambitions. The generalized sense of institutional decay, widespread finger pointing, accusations of endemic corruption, and rising fears of violence in the wake of the 27 of February (1989) riots would leave any regime open to conspiracy and military adventure. What is surprising in Venezuela is less the attempted coups than the intense popular enthusiasm and hero worship that immediately wrapped itself around the leaders of 4 February 1992.(24) Years of accumulated frustration, anger, and bitterness at the country's slow decay seemed to find relief in the counter symbolic alternative provided by a handful of strong, upright young men apparently bent on setting right what was wrong.

The coup of 4-F was a purely military operation. Elite army units (other services were not involved) successfully captured military and civilian targets in three of the country's four major cities (Maracaibo, Valencia, and Maracay), failing only in the capital, Caracas. In the heat of the moment, little was said about plans for a military government, and this allowed the most diverse groups to read their own agenda into plans of those attempting to overthrow the government. To the surprise of many in the government who resorted to classic denunciations of the coup as a fascist Right-wing adventure, the movement and its leaders were heroes to groups all across the social spectrum, but especially to the poor and the middle class. Political support was also broad, as politicians of all kinds joined to note that, although constitutional means were the best way to change, the coup itself responded to justifiable anger at real decay in the country.(25)

Some of the strongest support and headiest expressions of hero worship came from voices on the Left for whom the military and military officers had long been anathema. Angela Zago's remarkable LA REBELION DE LOS ANGELES is a paean of praise from the Left for the coup leaders and their organization the MBR-200 (from Motmento Bollva Revoucionario 200).(26) She locates the roots of the movement in conversations among young officers dating back to the early 1980s, documents their relative lack of concern with ideology, and swallows whole their self-image as being one with the people; thus: "The army has its roots in the brave people. It is nurtured by the people and finds life in its hopes" (p. 41).(27) Zago appears to have forgotten what conscription (the notorious recluta, which still operates through public roundups of undocumented young men) is like in Venezuela.

As the national situation deteriorated, these conversations became more pointed. The core group, centered on Hugo Chavez Frias, intensified the effort to recruit allies within the services and began specific planning for a coup, barely escaping discovery at several points. Zago presents the events of February 4th through a detailed series of accounts contributed by young officers who were in charge of specific operations: in Maracaibo, at the airports, in the attack on the Presidential Palace, and so forth. But none of these are as interesting or important as the public reaction to Hugo Chavez' televised speech accepting defeat and urging his comrades to lay down their arms. Chavez used only 178 words and was on the screen for little more than a minute, but the speech was a true bombshell. He accepted responsibility for defeat in Caracas (You have done well, we have failed) and stated that although the movement had lost "for the moment" (porahora), other, better days would come.

Rarely has defeat been turned into victory so swiftly. Chavez porahora echoed through the political system, permanently damaging an already shaken government. Over succeeding months, the government tried every imaginable measure short of resignation to restore confidence and broaden its political base. The Cabinet was shuffled, blue-ribbon commissions were named and reports issued, coalitions were attempted. Nothing worked. The drum beat of protest continued, reinforced by popular adulation of the heroes of the coup. Zago transcribes a series of popular songs and poems about Chavez two of which follow. The first is a succession of coplas in a classic Venezuelan style, the second an adaptation of the Lord's Prayer.

Hugo Chavez es mi nombre Comandante de los 'alos' 'Alzaos' pa' los del gobiemo Patriota pa' mi pueblo hambre Yo naci en los mismos Ilanos de este pueblo pisoteao soy un turpial po' el pico y un tigre por lo pintao con una lanza en la mano y un garrote encabullo.

[Hugo Chavez is my name Commander of the rebels Rebels to the government Heroes to my starving people I was born in the same Ilanos as this downtrodden people I can sing like a bird and I'm a tiger by my stripes with a lance in my hands and a club ready to strike.]

Oracion a Chavez Nuestro

Chavez nuestro que estas en la carcel sanctificado sea tu golpe venga (vengar) a nosotros tu pueblo Hagase tu voluntad la de Venezuela y la de tu ejercito danos hoy la confianza ya perdida no perdona a los traidores asi como tampoco perdonaremos a los que te aprehendieron Slvanos de tanta corrupci6n y librnos de CAP Amen.

Prayer to Our Chavez

[Our Chavez who art in jail Blessed be your coup Come to (avenge) us your people Your will be done That of Venezuela and your army. Give us our lost confidence and do not forgive the traitors Just as we will not forgive those who captured you. Save us from all the corruption and deliver us from CAP. Amen.]

This is not the place for an extended analysis of these and similar creations. Suffice it to say that they draw on imagery and rhythms of speech familiar to all Venezuelans. Combined with posters and statues, T-shirts, dolls, and complete camouflage outfits (a very popular Carnival costume for children in 1992) they express longing for change, pervasive anger, a search for vengeance, and a readiness for hero worship that clearly found little outlet in the existing political system.(28)

It is difficult to say goodbye to Venezuelan exceptionalism without feeling a sense of loss and of impending danger. Something valuable is gone and seems unlikely to return: a sense of openness, confidence in the future, and--not least--the benefits of stability and relatively clear rules of the game. Venezuela now finds itself in an exhausting and exceptionally perilous moment, caught between the decay of the party system and undefined alternatives for the future. Though the old rules no longer work, nothing is at hand to replace them. New rules remain to be created by new players for a game whose shape is yet to be determined. Writing in mid-1992, Sontagg and Maingon capture the sense of the moment well:

The time passed since 4-F has been one of the periods of greatest uncertainty in the whole republican history of the country. It is as if all the various actors had been (and still are) trying to put together a large jigsaw puzzle, without sharing the same rules and without knowing what the puzzle is supposed to come out like. The box with the picture on it has been lost (Sonntag and Maingon, 1992:).

Was Venezuelan exceptionalism simply an illusion, a veneer of wealth, stability and peace thinly laid over a society that had more in common with the rest of Latin America than its leaders or average citizens recognized or cared to acknowledge? Prominent voices in Venezuela have advanced this view for years, arguing that the mythology of exceptionalism blocked recognition of clear and pressing problems and magnified the inevitable cost of dealing with institutional rigidities, inefficiency, corruption, and inequality.(29) Most diagnoses of Venezuela's current ills agree in locating the core of the problem in two issues, and the path to solution in another. The problem lies in the intersect of (1) a rigid, top-heavy, and ossified state/party nexus with (2) macroeconomic changes that made it no longer possible for leaders to cushion bad times or circumstances with cash or other subsidies. This position has much in common with the longstanding critiques by the Left of the "exhaustion of the model," but, as we have seen, it gives much greater autonomy to political factors. Solutions are found in reconstituting the state and changing political rules to make for greater flexibility and more active participation by "civil society."(30)

If the old rules no longer work, what might new--but still democratic--rules look like? In all likelihood, nothing can stand in for political parties and fill their shoes as all-purpose mediators and organizers. However, if a core problem was that the party system froze while society continued to change, that rigid, top-heavy organizations failed to accept, and make a legitimate place for, new interests in "civil society", then it is clear that no single institution can or should take up the task. If civil society really has emerged in plural form, sidestepping party organizations and developing independent resources in the process, then the very attempt to squeeze all this diversity into party-controlled networks is bound to fail. The collapse of communism (undone by its own rigidities and sidestepped by everything from rock music, xerox machines and churches to jeans, Coca-Cola and human rights organizations) is a telling, if more extreme, case.

Assuming for the moment that politics continues without institutional rupture (i.e. no successful coup), a few points seem likely. The creation of multiple spaces for access to politics will continue with particular stress on states, localities, and congressional districts. This will be reinforced by ongoing decentralization of roles and resources, as other units of government assume functions shed by the central state. Political parties will not disappear but, in the long run, will be reconfigured in ways that make them less top-down transmission belts: they will seem less coherent, more heterogeneous, and, from an earlier point of view, relatively undisciplined collections of forces and interests. The character of leadership will also change: there will be less unquestioned autonomy and a greater range of skills and styles as national leaders begin to arise with new career experiences.(31) Congress and legislatures in general will gain power at the expense of the executive, with the result that a political system that thrived on secrecy and inter-elite pacts will move to more open and "transparent" a word much in vogue now, denoting accountability and accessibility to public scrutiny) dealings.

Solutions lie not so much in the formation of new political parties (although that is clearly part of the equation) as in successful transition to a more diversified politics, with more space for public participation, lower thresholds of access, and greater accountability at all levels. One important voice in recent debates speaks of democratizing democracy, opening doors to change by

providing incentives and appropriate conditions for a national process of constituting a more democratic society...To make us feel ourselves to be citizens, committed to a common task that begins with the search for consensus about where we are going and what steps we need to take to get there. The task may seem utopian, but after all, we are not beginning from zero (Sosa, 1993: 22-25).

Democratizing Venezuelan democracy in these terms is no easy task. Learning to live in an environment of scarcity will be hard all around, and the evidence to date suggests that no one is yet willing to bite this particular bullet. Economic decline has accelerated with the Caldera government, and military discontent remains cause for concern. There is also reason to doubt that "civil society" can meet the challenge of institutional innovation. The crisis (a much abused term in Venezuela today) of declining legitimacy is compounded by a pervasive sense of ungovernability, manifest in failure by the political class and the organizations it "controls" to contain protest, channel participation, and preserve a monopoly on the use of violence. The problem is that governability is desired at the same time that far-reaching attacks are being launched on the very institutions (state and political parties,) that have made for governability in the past. Indeed, parties are often excluded, by definition, from discussions of "civil society", a term that is used in common parlance to encompass a loose collection of groups that range from insurgent unions to middle-class neighborhood associations, feminist organizations, ecological groups, and a rich array of NGOs.

The invertebrate quality of "civil society" is both its strength and weakness. Strength comes from the skills and energies of a diverse constituency, deft in the use of media and capable of mobilizing expertise and public support on a host of issues.(32) Is the Venezuelan political system capable of creating new rules of the game and a new image of (and place for) its citizens? The "system" may or may not be capable, but capabilities clearly exist. Still, the very looseness and diversity of "civil society" suggests that it may be more effective in opposition than governance and points to the difficulty of combining new energies and leadership groups in effective organizations with an enduring real social base.

Without durable and effective organization, "civil society" is unlikely to provide coherence and direction for a complex, conflict-ridden society. The decay of parties sets groups free, but also, in the same measure, sets them adrift and leaves them with dwindling resources, easy prey to manipulative leaders and personalist politics. The experience of Peru's Alberto Fujimori, much admired in some Venezuelan circles, is a cautionary tale that warrants attention. Fujimori rode to power on a wave of popular disaffection, rejection of established parties, and the promise of avoiding the economic "shock" treatment advocated by his rival, Mario Vargas Llosa. He remains in power having abrogated the constitution, restrained public liberties, and put in place a shock program more far-reaching than anything hoped for by Vargas Llosa and his allies. Fujimori benefits from the afterglow of Shining Path's decline but survives, above all, by setting groups against one another and maneuvering in the space remaining.

Clearly Venezuela is a very different place from Peru, but the parallels of institutional decay and legitimacy of the public order are telling. Does the future hold a Fujimori for Venezuela? A more chilling parallel comes from the experience of Argentina after its own (and also in retrospect) brief golden age. Argentina's golden age was underwritten by beef, not oil, and closed abruptly with the Great Depression. The next 60 years brought seemingly endless cycles of conflict: military rule, populist authoritarianism, long-term economic decay, and spasms of violence capped off by the dirty war of the late 1970s, when Argentina scraped the bottom of its most recent barrel. For a long time, the society seemed so pluralist as to be incapable of unity, at odds with and alienated from its politics. Is there a Peron in Venezuela's future? The depths of popular disillusionment in Venezuela, manifest in declining political legitimacy, rising violence, the hero worship given to Chavez, and the slow, accumulating decay of optimism and hopes for a better future suggest that neither a Fujimori nor a Peron can be ruled out. Such solutions are in the wings, if not yet on the table.(33)

Optimists are scarce in Venezuela lately, and optimism is in short supply among scholars of Venezuela. Expressions of optimism are commonly met with derision, as if optimism were the opposite of reasoned and informed judgment. But although naive optimism is clearly mistaken, excesses of pessimism are also, well, excessive. A different perspective on recent events might well underscore the resilience and survival capacity of democracy in Venezuela. Battered by two coups, rising tides of civil protest, the impeachment (and impending trial) of a sitting president (and the likely impeachment of his predecessor), and coping at the same time with economic scandal and severe, unchecked decline in living standards, Venezuelans held two successful national elections, brought a respected elder statesman back to the presidency, and continue to seek change and reform from within. Despite an endless barrage of rumors and speculation in the media, there has been no break in constitutional rule and no collapse in the nation's fundamental institutions.

Creating legitimate politics is difficult under the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances. The process is all the more tangled and challenging when actors are under pressure, and action is hurried. The crisis of Venezuelan democracy suggests that transforming democracies from within is different (and likely more difficult) than the "transitions to democracy" that have so preoccupied scholars of Latin America in recent years. It is harder to rally opinion around ideals of democracy once fears of the military (or of the Left) that nurtured older pacts and arrangements no longer carry the force of conviction. When democracy is the status quo, problems are, not surprisingly, laid at its doorstep. Democracy can be saved in Venezuela if leaders and followers acknowledge the end of exceptionalism and begin to work for minimal consensus on the kind of society in which they want to live. Bidding a definitive goodbye to exceptionalism is only the first step to recreating politics.

1. Most observers agree that signs of decline were visible some time ago; many date its onset to the oil boom of the mid-1970s, making "golden age" of Venezuelan exceptionalism very short indeed.

2. On judging the relative weight of oil in creating exceptionalism see, among others Naim and Pinango (1984), Mommer (1988), Baptista and Mommer (1987), and Karl (1987). For a useful general discussion see Cavarozzi (1992).

3. The whole system has its roots in Venezuela's transformation out of the pervasive rural poverty, illiteracy, endemic disease, and caudillo rule that gave the 13th century its particular character. There is a vast literature on these issues; see, among others, Levine (1973).

4. No thorough work has yet appeared on La Causa R, but see Yepez Salas (1993) and Lopez Maya (1994).

5. Daniels is a retired admiral; Mueller Rojas is a retired general who is now active in La Causa R.

6. An indicator of the public's fascination with the coups is Di Pietro (12), though the November coup drew a more subdued public reaction (see Ojeda, 13). J.N. Cova's 27-N CITA CON LA HISTORIA (1993) records the extremes of alienation from democracy and hatred of President Perez that fueled that failed coup.

7. Urbaneja cites a well-known statement by Romulo Betancourt that AD began with the idea of "not a single district, not a single municipality without its party organization." He comments that

in addition to this organizational pattern that cuts across and reproduces the geography and political administrative map of the country from top to bottom, another slogan should be added--never explicit but evident in practice--one that

reproduces and cuts across the country's social map. This would be 'not a single union, not a single professional group, not a single peasant league without this party organization' (p. 142).

8.

Although in principle some group must pay the 'costs of the alliance,' the demands to be satisfied are so many that after a while the balance of victories and defeats turn into a complicated system of transfers through which one hand takes away what the other has given (p. 267).

The whole package was put in place by a complex set of formal and informal rules (constitutions, agreements, pacts, a tradition of mixed commissions) reinforced by dense networks of social contacts that Urbaneja calls el sistema conversacional venezolano [the Venezuelan conversational system] or the ideologia del agasalo [ideology of the banquet] (p. 235).

9. Among the areas targeted or reform was the judicial and penal system, a focus of great public discontent and anger. A mission (in March 1991) by the Anden Commission of Jurists produced a highly critical report. Working with interviews, studies of laws and institutions, and analysis of judicial and penal systems, the report affirms a broad sense that the system is not working. Areas receiving special attention include excessive party role in the selection of judges, lack of oversight of police and public officials, and awful conditions in jails and penitentiaries, including prisons specifically designed to hold those awaiting trial, who often end up incarcerated for years with no judicial process at all.

It is symptomatic [the report states] that in any analysis or debate about the administration of justice in Venezuela, two issues are always highlighted: corruption and the party penetration (partidizacion) of the Judicial Power: that is, interference or pressure of the political parties in decisions of the judiciary (Comision Anda de Juristas, 1992: 19-20).

10. The first Perez regime ran from 1973-1978. Perez is commonly referred to in Venezuela by his initials: CAP. The sources of political decay occupy the attention of many. Among the most important Venezueln scholars is Juan Carlos Rey. His works are not among those reviewed here, but they lay an important foundation for understanding (see, for instance, Rey 1983, 1991, and 12).

11. Naim explains his title:

From the perspective of policymakers, inducing large-scale societal changes through deliberate policy reforms is akin to walking through a constantly shifting maze filed with menacing beasts. When confronted, some of these monsters turn out to be harmless paper tigers, while others deadly minotaurs. Whereas paper tigers are often only a distraction, minotaurs force governments to look for ways to avoid the risky and costly confrontations with them or even to exit the policy-reform maze altogether (p. 13).

12. For other views on this decline, see Hausmann (1992) or Nissen and Mommer (1989).

13. Like many of the conditions Naim discusses, these have worsened, assuming catastrophic proportions with the Caldera government.

14. Perez had defeated the party organization and its preferred candidate to gain the nomination and essentially ignored the party in his campaign for reelection. His prime asset was his personal prestige and popularity, both of which proved shallow and short-lived.

15. In mid-12, the Minister of Family Teresa Albanez described the government's social policy in stark terms, as "an ambulance for picking up the dead and wounded left behind by economic policy" (quoted in Socorro, 1992).

16. Naim discusses this problem in a section entitled "Record Growth does not Political Stability Buy" (p. 119).

17. It is ironic that those (such as Perez) who called on the old politics to save the system are the very leaders who did so much to undermine the party system itself. For relevant comparative insights, see Atul Kohli (1990).

18. The members of Congress of whom Coppedge approves are "hard working;" the others are dismissed (e.g., pp. 83-91).

19.

But AD had another image among observers, who argued that even if AD had started out as a revolutionary party, it compromised its principles when democratic rules began. Some even go so for as to argue that Venezuela's phenomenally expensive political campaigns made AD and COPEI subservient to wealthy business groups in exchange for campaign financing (p. 74).

20. So for there is no good overall treatment of "civil society" in Venezuela, but see Levine and Crisp (1994) and Crisp, Levine and Rey (1994).

21. Occasionally the author is caught by events, as in the suggestion that

as Caldera passes permanently from the scene, COPEI would be expected to approximate AD's pattern of factionalism more closely if other conditions remained equal (p. 133).

Caldera did indeed pass from the scene in COPEI, but only to attack and defeat his own party in a remarkable campaign that returned him to the presidency al the end of 1993.

22. Coppedge attributes the events of 4-F to military frustration with executive impunity (p. 178), ignoring the years of organization and conspiracy within the military that laid the bases or the coup.

23. Medina correctly notes that the two-party division of Venezuelan politics (AD and COPEI) is not a constant, but rather a recent creation. He argues that the moment is ripe for a new alternative.

24. This group wr1s known widely as Comacates, short for "comandantes, mayores, capitanesy tenlentes" (commissioned officers under the rank of colonel). Public adulation applies only to the golpistas of 4-F; the coup of 27-N aroused little such enthusiasm. Polling in recent years has generally revealed high public trust in the military and the Church, with lowest trust going to political parties and trade unions.

25. The most important of these voices was Rafael Caldera, whose speech on 4 February was an effective opening salvo in his campaign for the presidency.

26. Author of AQUI NO HA PASADO NADA, a classic memoir of the guerrilla movement of the 1960s, Zago has long been a journalistic voice with which to reckon.

27. She uses the phrase "el bravo pueblo," recalling the national anthem which is entitled "Gloria al Bravo Pueblo" ("Glory to the Brave People").

28. On taking office in 14, one of President Caldera's first acts was to pardon the few golpistas remaining in jail. This executive order, modeled on his successful pacification of the late 1960s, was doubtless founded on the notion that Chavez was less dangerous in the open than as an obscure object of public affection.

29. For an articulate and influential expression of this view, see Naim and Pingo (1984).

30. Would Venezuelan politics have entered into crisis even without the decline of the 1980s? Such hypothetical counterfactual conditionals (what...) are always difficult to work out, but on the analysis presented here, it seems likely that political discontent, protest, and a search for alternative patterns of organization are independent of economic difficulties, if clearly sharpened by them.

31. The powerful top-down structure of the party system magnifies the impact of leadership, good and bad. Diversifying the sources, styles, and levels of leadership should cushion these effects. See Kohli (1990) for an instructive account of the comparable experience of the Congress party in India.

32. For a recent effort at gathering groups and mobilizing opinion around a new agenda, see Conferencia Episcopal Venezolana (1994). Many groups are deft at public campaigns and the use of mass media. The experience of the neighborhood associations and, above all, the Escuela de Vecinos de Venezuela) is a case in point. On these groups see Crisp, Levine, and Rey (1994) and Levine and Crisp (1994).

33. It is not clear that the coalitions required to support such alternatives are viable in Venezuela. The political success of Peron, for example, rested on his ability simultaneously to coopt and control unions, make deals with industrialists, and keep the military in tow, all in the context of an expanding economy, at least in his first period in office. Who can manage such an alliance in Venezuela? Does this suggest an MBR-Causa Ralliance? There is little evidence to support such a projection. Fujimori's political appeal is anti-party and antielite, a rich vein to mine in Venezuela today. But his success makes sense as an outgrowth of the economic and political disasters left behind by Alan Garcia, compounded by the seemingly relentless advance of the Shining Path. Fortunately, Venezuela has yet to scrape bottom so badly.

REFERENCES

BAPTISTA, A. and B. MOMMER (1987) El petroleo en el pensamiento politico venezolano, un ensayo. Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones IDEA.

CAVAROZZI, M. (12) "Beyond Transitions to Democracy in Latin America." Journal of Latin American Studies 24, 3 (October): 665-684.

Comision Andina de Juristas (132) Venezuela: Administracion de justicia y crisis institucional. Lima, Peru: Comision Andina de Juristas.

Conferencia Episcopal Venezolano (14) Encuentro y Alternativas; Venezuela 1994; Encuentro Nacional de la Sociedad Civil (2 vols.). Caracas, Venezuela: Publicaciones Universidad Catolica Andres Bello.

COVA, J. (1993) 27-N Cita con la Historia. Caracas and Valencia: Vadell Hermanos.

CRISP, B., D. LEVINE, and J. REY (1394) "The Legitimacy Problem," in J. McCoy, A. Serbin, W. Smith, and A. Stambouli (eds.) Democracy Under Pressure: Politics and Markets in Venezuela. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

DANIELS, E. (13) Militares y democracia; Papel de la institucibn armada de Venezuela en la consolidacion de la democracia. Caracas, Venezuela: Jose Agustin Catacas, Centauro.

DI PIETRO, W. (1332) Venezuela despus de Chavez. Que vendra...previsiones astrologicas. Caracas, Venezuela: n.p.

ELLNER, S. (1988) From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative Politics: Venezuela's Movimiento al Socialismo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

HAUSMANN, R. (1992) "Sobre la crisis economica venezolana," pp. 87-113 in Juan Carlos Rey, Julia Barragan, and Ricardo Hausmann (eds.) America Latina, alternativas para la democracia. Caracas, Venezuela: Monte Avila Editores.

KARL, T. (1987) "Petroleum and Political Pacls: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela." Latin American Research Review 22, 1: 63-34.

KOHLI, A. (1990) Democracy and Discontent. India's Growing Crisis of Governability. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

LEVINE, D. (1973) Connict and Political Change in Venezuela. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

LEVINE, D. and B. CRISP (1994) "Legitimacy, Governability and Reform," in L. Goodman, M. Naim, J. Forman, and J. Tulchin (eds.) Lessons frorn the Venezuelan Experience. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction PTeSS.

LEVINE, D. and M. KORNBLITH (1995) "Venezuela: The Life and Times of the Party System," in Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (eds.) Building Democratic Institutions, Parties, and Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford Universiy Press.

LOPEZ MAYA, M. (1994) "The Rise of Causa R: A Workers' Party Shakes up the Old Politics.' NACLA Report on the Americas (March/April): 29-34.

MANEIRO, A. (1986) Notas Politicas. Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones del Agua Mansa.

MOLINA, J. (1991) E1 sistema elecoral venezolano y sus consecuendas politicas (3rd ed.). Caracas, Venezuelas: IIDH-CAPEL Vadell Hermanos.

MOMMER, B. (1988) L cuestion peuolera. Caracas, Venezuela: Fondo Editorial Tropykos.

MUELLER ROJAS, A. (12) Relaciones peligrosas. Militares, politica y esdo. Caracas, Venezuela: Fondo Editorial Tropykos.

NAIM, M. and R. PINANGO (1984) El caso venezuela; Una ilusion de armonia. Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones IESA.

NISSEN, H-P. and B. MOMMER (1989) Adios a la bonanza, crisis de la distribucion del ingreso en Venezuela. Caracas, Venezuela: ILDIS-CENDES, EdLorial Nueva Sociedad.

OJEDA, W. (1993) 27-N verdades. Cancas, Venezuela: Vadell Hermanos Editores.

Portada (Carcas) (1993) "Un Creyente: Pablo Medina." (28 February).

REY, J. (1992) "Apogeo y decadencia de la democracia representativa," pp. 15-51 in Juan Carlos Rey, Tulia Barragan, and Ricardo Hausmann (eds.) America Latina, alternativas para la democracia. Caracas, Venezuel: Monte Avila Editores.

--(1991) " La democracia venezolana y la crisis del sistema populista de conciliacion." Revist de Estudios Politicos (Madrid) 74 (October-December): 533-578.

--(1989) El futuro de la. democracia en Venezuela. Catacas, Venezuela: Serie Estudios, Coleccion IDEA.

SCHAPOSNIK, E. (1985) Democratizacion de las fuerzas armadas venezdanas. Caracas, Venezuela: Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales (ILDIS).

SOCORRO, M. (1992) "Las Semillas de la crisis actual se sembraron en 1958." El Diario de Caracas (18 June).

SONNTAG, H. and T. MAINGON (12) Venezuela 4-F: Un analisis sociopolitico. Caracas: Venezuela: Editorial Nueva Sociedad.

SOSA (1993) "Perspectiva 1993: entre la fuerza y la democratizacion." SIC 551 (enero-febrero): 22-25.

YEPEZ SALAS, G. (1993) La Causa R: origen y poder. Caracas, Venezuela: Fondo Editorial Tropykos.

Daniel H. Levine is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has written and published extensively on Latin American affairs, particularly on political history and affairs relating to Venezuela as well as on the role of the Catholic Church and liberation theology. His most recent books are POPULAR VOICES IN LATIN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM (Princeton, 1992) and CONSTRUCTING CULTURE AND POWER IN LATIN AMERICA (Michin, 133).

Daniel H. Levine, The author thanks Brian F. Crisp, Phyllis Levine, and Margaret Martin for helpful comments on earlier versions of his essay.

Copyright Journal of Interamerican Studies Winter 1994
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved