Democracy Around the World 3: Venezuela

Democracy Around the World 3: Venezuela and Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution

The democratic deficit

The examples of Greece and Italy illustrate the failure of a certain kind of democracy. Unable to satisfy at the same time the voters and the all-powerful market analysts, the politicians have been forced to abdicate responsibility to non-elected bureaucrats, who are in the enviable position of being able largely to ignore the people’s demands without committing career suicide. This is a clear indication that, at least in Eurozone states, when there is a choice between the will of the people and the will of the international money-lenders, it is the latter who get their way.

This is something of a crisis of democracy. In the face of extreme economic difficulties, it turns out that the voters are not the ultimate authority - the credit ratings agencies are! And when they discover this, the ordinary people tend not to be too happy about it.

Venezuela: Giving the markets the finger since 1999

Is there an alternative? Searching for a place where a democratic government might stand up to the Standard & Poors of this world rather than bow down to them, my sights fell firstly on Venezuela.

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, holds a copy of the second longest national constitution in the world. Must be pretty small print. (Photo: Agência Brasil/Victor Soares) 

For a taste of the Venezuelan regime’s attitude towards the markets, consider the recent high-profile case surrounding Texas company Exxon’s former operations in the oil-rich South American country. When President Hugo Chávez’s government created a law in 2007 stipulating that all foreign oil companies could only operate in Venezuela as minority partners of the state-owned PDVSA, a couple of firms went off in a huff and sulked. When one of these, Exxon, decided to try to make an example of the Venezuelan government, demanding $12billion to compensate for its lost Venezuelan assets and contracts, the state fought a legal battle which ended up in the International Chamber of Commerce. Last year, this body ruled that only $907 million was actually due, and now the Venezuelan government has declared that it considers the debt settled with a payment of only $255 million. The reduced amount takes account of the legal costs of the dispute, as well as Venezuelan state assets frozen in the United States. Take that, the Man!

How do they get away with that?

So what is it about the Venezuelan regime that allows it to be so brazen in potentially upsetting the market that is the major source if its wealth?

(Photo: Flikr/Amanda Graham) 

Well, the largest known natural oil reserve that’s sitting in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt probably has something to do with it. But this alone, while it might make the bad-ass anti-capitalist stance easier to adopt, does not account for the government’s cocky and sometimes openly hostile attitude to the private oil companies in the first place. The explanation for this is not geological, but political, and it’s largely thanks to Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution.

So who is Hugo Chávez and what’s this Bolivarian Revolution all about?

Before answering these questions, let’s take a step back. Before 1998, Venezuelan politics was based on a complacent two-party system known as puntofijismo, named after the 1958 Punto Fijo pact agreed between the major parties, and whole-heartedly supported by the USA. The pact had put an end to deep political divisions in the wake of military dictatorship and ushered in a period of stability, but also of growing corruption, clientelism and a ballooning bureaucracy fuelled by oil revenues.

Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich

This is the form of government sometimes called ‘representative’ democracy, because the ordinary voters choose representatives to make decisions for them. Typically, leaders are selected from a political élite, and power is swapped peacefully between two or three parties. In Venezuela, the different politicians were almost indistinguishable in their promises to the electorate, few of which were ever kept. Such states have all the trappings and procedures of democracy, and, if you’re lucky, the elections are even deemed free and fair. But the choice put in front of voters is usually, to borrow an analogy from South Park, between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

Representative vs Participatory Democracy

Suddenly, at the end of 1998, a radical new force erupts in Venezuelan politics: Hugo Chávez. A lower-middle-class military man of mixed race, he was borne into Presidential office on a tidal wave of disenchantment with puntofijismo. Chávez claimed he would make radical changes to Venezuelan politics and society through a ‘Bolivarian’ revolution. Part of this plan was to replace the merely representative with a truly participatory democracy.

The most instantly recognisable trait of participatory democracy is the referendum, and there have been plenty of those in Venezuela throughout the Bolivarian Revolution (more on them later). But the aim of empowering Venezuelan citizens to take part in decision-making goes much deeper than putting an individual question to the nation every 12 months or so. To this end, Bolivarian Missions were set up to deploy state resources directly in the poorest areas, sidestepping the existing mechanisms which were considered corrupt. The ‘missions’ have focused on education - from basic literacy to management and accountancy; healthcare and preventative medical advice; housing and land reform, with the aim of engaging the least enfranchised in society and giving them the tools to participate in democracy, as well as generally raising the standard of living.

Bolivarian Missions have contributed to improved literacy in Venezuela (Photo: Flikr/Franklin Reyes)

Alongside the Missions are the Communal Councils, a new form of local government with a high degree of autonomy, in which ordinary people are encouraged to take part. In the sphere of economics, meanwhile, the co-operative model is promoted and incentivised, with many struggling businesses or empty factories expropriated by workers. Compensation is paid to the dispossessed owner with state backing and the workers run the business themselves, deciding on things like wages by voting. The result, in theory, is that workers at all levels are involved in the management of the enterprise they collectively own. And there are no arguments over excessive executive pay.

So where’s the catch?

So, everybody is happy in Venezuela and no one ever complains, right? Not quite. Chávez, like any political leader, has many opponents, both within Venezuela and internationally. This is an unavoidable, and a democrat worth their salt would probably even say it’s a healthy state of affairs. Chávez’ attitude to democratic opposition is unfortunately somewhat eccentric and, you might say, undemocratic. The privately owned TV and radio networks and newspapers in Venezuela have frequently been openly hostile to Chávez, it’s true, but they have often paid a heavy price. As recently as 2010, six TV stations were ordered to cease broadcasting after a dispute with the government, and on-air critics of the regime were arrested.

And it gets worse

The USA has also been a regular critic of Chávez and his regime, even (rather undemocratically) supporting a 2002 coup attempt. Chávez might therefore be forgiven a little paranoia and defensiveness. Unfortunately, in foreign policy the President has evolved over the years from the rebellious maverick who forged a renewed OPEC agreement into the deranged villain who will side with absolutely anyone who opposes US hegemony. Fidel Castro was an obvious ally I can hardly begrudge the South American socialist, but Gaddafi? On the death of this egregious dictator, Chávez stated, “We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr.” Worryingly, he also sees Mugabe and Ahmadinejad as his brothers in arms, and Venezuela was one of the few countries to take Russia’s side after the latter’s invasion of Georgia in 2009.

Chávez and Ahmadinejad, all smiles (Photo: Flikr/Hugo Chávez) 

As regards Venezuelan democracy, however, perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Bolivarian Revolution is the very centrality of Chávez within it. It is hard to imagine the state he has created without him, and he’s been in power uninterruptedly for even longer than Tony Blair was. This wasn’t easy – his opponents used the recall mechanism he himself had introduced to force him to defend his presidency in a 2004 referendum and he then had to campaign in two more referenda to win the right to serve an unlimited number of terms as President because the first attempt failed. For a leader who has been in power for thirteen years, his approval rating is astronomical, without being so high as to be unbelievable, but this will inevitably come to an end at some point, and the question is, what will he do then?

Chávez’ record as a democrat is less than exemplary. Did I mention his own failed military coup d’état against the elected government in 1992? But the real test of a leader’s democratic credentials, I think, comes at the end of their career. How do they leave office?

Chávez will be able to be considered a true democrat if he willingly relinquishes power when his popularity finally subsides and a presidential election doesn't go his way, or a tyrant if he follows the example of his pal Gaddafi and goes out all guns blazing. But his recent health worries highlight a third possibility – that he will die without the question ever being raised. And if he is a Gaddafi after all, that would surely be for the best for everyone.

The concerns surrounding the larger-than-life figurehead of this unique revolution are many and they are very serious, but they should not be allowed to obscure the Bolivarian blueprint for an alternative model of democracy. The Bolivarian experiment and the lessons that could be learnt from it might provide some solutions to the crisis facing old-fashioned liberal democracy in Europe. Instead of technocracy, the participatory model suggests that more democracy might be the cure, giving the people at the bottom a greater stake in society and in the economy, giving everyone a chance to express an opinion on big constitutional questions, making local communities more autonomous and standing up to vested interests instead of pandering to them. But all this comes with a warning: Beware of the cult of personality. Leader cults, at their most innocuous, make society overly dependent on the leader. At worst, the society becomes his hostage, and that's bad for democracy.