Chavismo y Oposición en Venezuela : Exploraciones críticas sobre democracia, descentralización y populismo

• The main objective of the article is to analyze a few aspects of the Venezuelan democracy, with a particular focus on on the party system transformations related to decentralization, and the strategies by the political opposition and government respectively. The political parties (and their principal leaders) play the protogonic roles (as also to a certain limited extent the mass-media). The proceedings of the movement around current President Hugo Chávez (the Chavismo) and its connections to the political process since 1998 are worth a closer analysis, as well as certain aspects of populistic political leadership. The decentralization process is emphasized as a kind of historical context and a limitation of the focus. A mayority of the political opposition movements (and Chavismo) are rooted in the decentralization process. The contextual focus is the Venezuelan political party system and decentralization constitutes the independent variable. The study will reveal that the traditional two-party-system was undermined by decentralization. From some perspectives, the populism and power concentration of the Chávez movement constitutes a source of conflict for certain democratization principles of decentralization. Theoretically, a mixed/integrated approach will be used, combining actors´ rational choice with more process-structural approaches, particularly the political opportunity structures theories.

Nyckelord

Chavismo

Opposition

populism

decentralization

political parties

Venezuela.

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)