His [Chávez] proposal in the 1998 elections was to transform representative democracy into a "participative" one - a proposal that had been born in debates of Venezuelan institutions and civil society organizations since the mid-1980s (López Maya, 2011) [...]. Bolivarianism appropriated this proposal and even expanded it so that the participatory principle would be applied at all levels, structures and apparatus of the state. The "participative and protagonist" democracy was embodied in the Constitution approved in 1999, called the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CRBV).
During the first Chávez administration, an atmosphere of optimism was created, particularly among the poor and impoverished, but also among progressive urban middle classes. Public policy decisions with a participatory perspective stimulated the creation of multiple institutions, such as technical water tables, land committees, gas tables, self-managed community organizations, local public participation councils, and so on. Thanks to these initiatives, the strength and legitimacy of the rising elite strengthened Chávez's political project and leadership in the face of the violent political confrontation that took place in the country from 2001 to 2005, between the government and powerful social and political opposition forces, led by business groups, the media, managers of the state oil company, disgruntled military and political parties of the past, backed by international interests and actors. The Chávez government overcame a coup d'état, an oil strike and guarimbas operations (track cuts, many violent); likewise, President Chávez triumphed in 2004 over a presidential recall referendum. In December 2005, Chavismo obtained 100 percent of the seats in the National Assembly when the main opposition parties withdrew from the electoral contest, alleging that there would be fraud.
Political success brought authoritarian temptation on the part of the President. Empowered, both by his victories against opposition insurrections and by frequent electoral processes, where a plebiscite logic operated, the personalism of the President was strengthened to the detriment of the institutions. On the other hand, destroyed and fragmented the political and social opposition and strengthened military sectors loyal to Chávez over civilians and political parties of the government coalition, Chávez took the one-person decision to "radicalize" the process of changes. As a result, the face of the "oil rent maldition" once again showed its jaws…
As a background scenario, the price of a barrel of oil has risen steadily since 2003, contributing financially to the fact that the initial Bolivarianism was basically reduced to a political force loyal to the person of the president and any action or thought proposed by him ("chavismo"). Participatory and protagonist democracy became "protagonist and revolutionary", and the development model, which from its beginnings was confusing, was directed towards a "21st century socialism", also confusing, but as "rentistic" or more than the industrialist development model (see López Maya and Lander, 2007).
Personal note: it is curious that several authors mention the fact that Chávez did not speak about "socialism" until 2005 in the Sao Paulo World Social Forum.
From
http://nuso.org/media/articles/downloads/4.TC_Straka_268.pdf
There has been much debate as to whether Chávez's project was socialist from the beginning, or whether the construction of "Bolivarian socialism," as he ended up calling his ideology, was the result of a gradual radicalization. His contacts with communist groups since the 1980s, as well as his visit to Havana in 1994 and the presence of extreme left-wing advisors already in the 1998 election campaign, support the thesis that he always professed some kind of socialist thought and that his continued declarations that he was not a socialist or communist in the first phase of his public life (many of them can be seen on the Internet) were nothing more than stratagems not to frighten voters. A little in the style of Fidel Castro, who denied being a communist during the entire guerrilla war and the first two years of his government. In fact, Chávez did not speak of socialism until the 2005 Sao Paulo World Social Forum, that is, after the string of victories that thwarted his main opponents (the 2002 oil strike and coup, the 2003 strike, the 2004 referendum and, finally, the overwhelming triumph in the 2006 presidential elections).
Chávez's 2006 presidential re-election, with a historic 63.4 percent of valid votes, was interpreted by the President as approval of his socialist proposal. In the following months he implied a greater centralization and concentration of power in his person and the deepening of the process of destruction of the institutional counterweights on the Executive, already initiated in his first government. For his second government, President Chávez was able to rely on his absolute control over the Legislative, Judicial and Citizen powers, as well as over the Electoral power constituted by the National Electoral Council. The proposal for a "communal" socialist state, presented by Chávez as a proposal for constitutional reform in 2007, however, was rejected by the population in a plebiscite called by the National Assembly that December (Lander and López Maya, 2008). This did not stop President Chávez from finding, in the following months and years, thanks to the subordination of the Judicial Branch to his will, legal interpretations and administrative resources to establish the legal-political framework of a new regime that would develop parallel to the constitutional one (Curiel, 2014). Unlike the CRBV's participatory democracy, Chávez's socialist proposal lacked debate and consensus in society (López Maya in González, 2013).
The situation began to become less propitious to Chavismo in 2009, when in addition to ignoring the popular mandate, hydrocarbon prices in the world market suffered a significant decline induced mainly by the contraction of the world economy as a result, among other phenomena, of the U.S. mortgage crisis. But they recovered shortly afterwards and the government ignored this and other signs of change in the oil market, and continued to increase fiscal spending for its socialist project and its social policies - the well-known "missions" - increasingly clientelist and at the service of its electoral interests (Maingon, 2006). Starting in 2012, oil prices fell again, and the trend has continued with the current president Nicolás Maduro, until the time to finish this article (beginning of 2016). To the extent that the government applied the same strategy as in 2009, i.e. to do nothing and wait for a new price increase, the country was plunged into a deep global crisis with similar socioeconomic figures for inflation, GDP decline and poverty at the end of the twentieth century.
The current severe crisis, in many respects, is similar to the one that brought Chavism to power, since in the end the "revolutionary" policies did not solve any of the structural economic, social or political-institutional problems. Even in some aspects -such as institutional and political performance- the current crisis is more serious, since the destruction of representative democracy institutions has deepened the endemic inefficiency and administrative corruption, while political polarization and the lack of recognition of the officialism of its political adversaries -which it disqualifies and considers "enemies"- has contributed to the growing breakdown of the norms of social coexistence. Likewise, the exacerbated statism of the socialist proposal accentuated the Dutch disease, a recurrent evil in our economy, reducing the industrial apparatus by half and prostrating agricultural production through confiscations of haciendas and herds.9 The unexpected fall in oil prices since mid-2014 has made the massive imports of the boom era unsustainable, opening up a huge shortage and shortage of food, medicines and basic goods.
Chávez appeared in front of television cameras for the last time on December 8, 2012, before leaving for Havana to undergo the last operation. Enesa alocución announced that something happened to him and he left his vice-president and chancellor, Nicolás Maduro, as his successor. Following the guidelines agreed upon in the CRBV, his death immediately declared, presidential elections were called, which took place on April 14. Maduro won those elections by a very narrow margin of 223,599 votes, 1.5 percent ahead of the MUD candidate, Capriles Radonski himself (CNE, 2013). The continuation of the unstable and depressed oil market, a now charismatic and politically weak president, and an erratic, polarized and deaf government orientation to any recognition of the population's growing discontent have marked Maduro's management. In the last two years, to this gubernamental performance was added the sustained drop in the prices of the oil barrel in the world market, contributing to the chavismo losing important political backing expressed in the weakening of its electoral flow, diminishing the popularity of the President and in the appearance of internal political dissidences.
In the parliamentary elections held on December 6, 2015, the chavismos suffered a resounding defeat. As has been consolidated in this chavista era, the elections were characterized by widely advantageous competition conditions for the official candidates, given the recurrent use they make of state goods and resources in their campaigns, including a powerful communicational platform that controls the majority of television, radio and press channels. Despite this, the citizenry, which participated massively in this process -75 percent participation-, gave a solid victory to the MUD (CNE, 2015).
The death of President Hugo Chávez in March 2013 left an immeasurable political vacuum, given that in his years of government he ended up concentrating practically all power and making all decisions. Since its beginnings, Maduro's government has been suffering from a crisis of legitimacy and governability that has highs and lows.
Several ingredients make it difficult to overcome this crisis peacefully. One is the persistence of the polarized, offensive and aggressive discourse of officialism. In a context in which more than half of the voters voted against chavismo, ignoring, offending, persecuting opponents and even imprisoning leaders obscures the political atmosphere. Allowing the exercise of violence by groups and politicians associated with the government against opposition leaders, as has happened in institutions such as the National Assembly, or in peaceful protests such as marches and opposition concentrations in 2014, where paramilitary groups - called collectives - armed pro-Chavistas and in functions of repression appear, only accumulates indignation and resentments. Venezuela is a society that today exhibits high levels of social violence and now growing practices of political violence.
The charismatic domination exerted by Chávez while he ruled has comechanging towards a "routinization", which has not taken the modern "rational-legal" path under laws but a traditional neopatrimonialist one (Bechle, 2011; Weber, 1977). The leader's trust group has been establishing a political order in which the features of extreme presidentialism, systematic clientelism and the indifferentiation of public and private goods as opposed to an order guided by the rule of law predominate (Bechle, 2011). Although some legal mechanisms persist, and elections are held, these mechanisms are not the main or determining factor in the exercise of political power. These characteristics extinguish the "anti-authoritarian" nature that could have had the charismatic domination exercised by Chávez (Weber, 1977), to give way to a political tyrannical or despotic order, sustained by a system of values where the sacralization of Chávez as a quasi-divine figure of a State religion is combined with the legitimization by right of those who declare to be his inheritors. This neopatrimonialist drift finds in significant social and political sectors of the country resistances and rejections that force the government to control society by means of a growing repression and militarization, which, together with the socioeconomic crisis that has been deepening, keeps in permanent instability and socio-political anxiety (López Maya and Panzarelli, 2014, unpublished).
Extreme inefficiencies in public administration also characterize this type of domination, and are another important dimension of the Venezuelan global crisis. Although it has been an intrinsic part of the functioning of the Petroestado (Karl, 1995), it has been worsened by the deliberate destruction of the country's democratic institutionality within the transition plan towards a "communal socialist" state.
In effect, since 2009, when Chávez emerged victorious from a constitutional amendment referendum to incorporate the indefinite re-election of the authorities into the articles of the CRBV, the President, relying on the subordination of the Judicial Power and other public powers, promoted the approval of a new body of laws that opened a legal channel to create a state apparatus parallel to the constitutional: the "Communal State", towards which state resources have been diverted. This State, centralized around the Presidency, organizes the population in communal and communal councils, where decisions are taken in assemblies, weakening and endangering the territorial organization of the country in states and municipalities, and constitutional liberal principles such as universal suffrage, political pluralism and the separation and independence of public powers. Governors and mayors have seen their attributes and resources weakened in favor of this new and parallel state apparatus.
The participation of citizens in this emerging State is a stimulated and directed activity from above, within a centralized planning scheme and from a collective and not individual conception of the political subject. Communal councils organize the population territorially and communes articulate it to the State, acting, both instances, as managers of the policies approved by the political leadership. This incipient institutionality does not have an alternative economic model to the rentistic one, and given the disappearance of Chávez, who was its ideologue, as well as the current crisis, its viability has been severely diminished. On the other hand, this overlapping of two parallel state structures contributes to the anarchic and anomic situation that currently characterizes daily life in Venezuela.
They're both puppet warriors for the dark forces of social disintegration and they do look quite similar to me. All three, if you add Obama to the list.
