Popular Politics in Bolivarian Venezuela

The Relation of Civil Society to Bolivarian, Not Liberal, Democracy

Supporters and critics of the Bolivarian process in Venezuela have noted that the country has seen a decline in liberalism in a number of distinct spheres (Arditi, 2008; Azzellini and Sitrin, 2014; Corrales and Penfold, 2011; Spanakos, 2008; 2015). While democracy generally involves the increased participation of the whole of a citizenry in periodic and quotidian decision making about the common good, liberalism aims to preserve the political, economic, social, and religious rights of individuals vis-à-vis the state, other individuals, and groups. Democracy is largely majoritarian, while liberalism is explicitly countermajoritarian. Indeed, liberalism assumes a neutral state which acts as a referee, not an advocate, for plural groups competing for state resources, which often means protecting minority factions and restricting the agency of majority groups. Political scientists often assume that liberalism and democracy are mutually reinforcing, but Venezuela is a clear instance in which this is not the case.

Indeed, while there has been considerable democratization in Venezuela since 1999, there has also been a decline in liberalism (Spanakos, 2008). Critics find in the decline in liberal constraints on authority (the increase in the size of the Supreme Court, the reduction to a unicameral legislature, the perceived partisanization of the armed forces, the removal of term limits for executive officeholders) proof of a shift away from liberal democracy, possibly to semiauthoritarian or outright authoritarian politics (Corrales, 2015; Levitsky and Way, 2010; Mainwaring and Perez-Liñan, 2013; Weyland, 2013). Supporters also see a move away from liberalism but view it as leading to a more authentic, popular, and “protagonistic” form of democracy (Azzellini and Sitrin, 2014; Ciccariello-Maher, 2014). They argue, among other things, that minority protections are a way to reinforce class privileges and undermine the agency of the people.

The Nonliberal State and Civil Society

The first of these books takes on the question of liberal and nonliberal means toward democratic change, examining the activation and transformation of civil society and state. Both Hellinger and Smilde’s Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy and Valencia’s We Are the State! decline to analyze either the state or civil society but see the two as intertwined and producing new and at times difficult-to-characterize configurations. They give special attention to the activity and ideas that motivate residents of barrios and other progovernment activists as a way of studying the Bolivarian Revolution distinct from the Chávez-centered approach that dominated much of the early research.

Hellinger and Smilde’s excellent collection aims to understand the nature, direction, and future of Venezuela’s democracy. The contributors claim that this understanding can best be attained by avoiding the lens of liberalism or authoritarianism, the use of which has been the cause of missed opportunities for the exploration of “plurality of democratic forms” and denial of the “legitimacy of endogenous democratic models.” The collection shows that the overemphasis on these “normative measuring sticks” has disabled scholars from understanding Venezuelan democracy “on its own terms” (2) and therefore from explaining what makes revolution endemic to Venezuela.

Perhaps the most fundamental question in the collection is the relationship between civil society and democracy, which Smilde takes up in his chapter. Liberals understand civil society in terms of autonomy from the state. Given that they see power as coercive and seek to limit its dominion, it is not surprising that they are skeptical of any contact between the state and civil society. Supporters of the Bolivarian process have a different vision, seeing the government’s use of state money to support sympathetic groups or to punish groups that are seen as “opposition” as part of a profound transformation of politics.

In an effort to determine how the people of Venezuela understand democracy, Hellinger surveys activists in 11 barrios and finds that a large number of active participants in the Bolivarian process are skeptical about representative democracy and, in particular, about its ability to guarantee the articulation of their interests. This skepticism does not, however, mean a rejection of “procedural” democracy. Not surprisingly, the responses of their respondents in Hellinger’s 2006 survey differ (85% of respondents in Barrios agree Venezuela is a democracy while respondents from Urbanizaciones agree by 55%). However, in total, the surveyed sample of respondents from barrios and urbanizaciones suggests that 75% conceive of Venezuela as a democracy (p. 40). What is perhaps more interesting is the assertion that the participants could “achiev[e] democracy without elites” ( p. 29). Hellinger also notes that both wealthy and poor respondents demonstrated surprisingly high levels of tolerance and supported equality and inclusion, a finding that contrasts with the assumption that these groups are incapable of engaging in “consensual politics” (57).

Not all bottom-up analysis is, however, as sympathetic to the Bolivarian process. López Maya and Lander’s chapter, which contextualizes the rise of participatory democracy, highlights the potential of the people Chávez reinvigorated. Subsequent writings by López Maya show an increasingly critical position, one that identifies a greater role for the military in Bolivarian governments and institutional and social spaces (see López Maya, 2011). Hawkins, Rosas, and Johnson find that the government delivered its social missions to neighborhoods on the basis of “charismatic linkage . . . rather than either a strictly clientelistic or programmatic one” (201). Similarly, María Pilar García-Guadilla has insisted that while plural spaces for participation have opened in the past two decades, these spaces are not entirely autonomous. Instead, their status as social organizations fluctuates between day-to-day practice and responses to moments of crisis that force them to become “politically mobilized” (95).

Each of these chapters points to the fact that the government gives preference to certain actors and punishes others and that such partisanization of public space reduces the potential for civil society to be a place for robust democracy. Supporters note that the playing field was pitched too steeply in favor of the traditional elites and that the groups that receive money, participate in government programs and rallies, and speak in popular assemblies may be sympathetic to the Bolivarian governments but are not controlled by them. Velasco’s chapter on the activists in the 23 de Enero barrio finds consistent preferences among Bolivarian activists: they are progressive, skeptical of representative democracy, critical of capitalism, and critical of government. While they are more sympathetic to governments headed by officials connected to the Bolivarian project, they protest against these as well. Importantly, they do not protest in the streets against opposition politicians and through institutional means against Bolivarian ones. Rather, they occupy political space and insist on their “sovereignty” over their neighborhood. Thus, while they accept government money, sympathize with its leadership and goals, and collaborate with its offices, they are still “autonomous” from the state. This autonomy is not liberal, but its proponents see it as more democratic. Schiller’s and Fernandes’s chapters on government-supported community radio demonstrate a similar relationship of sympathy and autonomy in local radio programming and, ultimately, public political deliberation and communication.

While the Hellinger and Smilde collection demonstrates a critical dialogue between chapters that see greater and lesser merit in nonliberal relations between the state and civil society, Cristobal Valencia’s We Are the State! is wholly favorable and proposes something more ambitious. He claims that a new form of state is built via civil society. Through their activity and collaboration with the state, civil society groups in Venezuela transform “state power into poder popular [and this transformation] is the struggle to be the state” (129). One informant told Valencia, “We are way ahead of the Chávez government most times. . . . El Pueblo is capable of making state-level decisions” (102). This activity helps redefine sovereignty, for Valencia, away from a Hobbesian-state-oriented vision toward one that is more people-centered. He writes that the “Venezuelan case helps us see how sovereignty pertains as much to subjects as to institutions and that both are determinative of each other—and ultimately of the character of the state” (189).

This sense of sovereignty was evident when the Chavista candidate for mayor of Greater Caracas lost in 2008. The activists of La Gran Comuna de El Valle responded by occupying public spaces, such as the Plaza de Bolívar and the mayor’s offices. In so doing they expressed their adamant refusal to “give up any of the spaces won by the [Bolivarian] revolution” (100), and soon enough the mayor’s building was turned over to them. In this way, they complicated the liberal conception of democracy and pushed toward one that privileged social justice over “respect for electoral procedures of majority rule” (102). When asked if the reshaping of the political order was democratic, given the exclusion of the opposition, one Chavista responded (116),

Democracy is about making things right in terms of resources and participation. There are particular contradictions between the revolution and democracy. You are going to see things that don’t look very democratic in terms of how they are carried out. . . . To some degree now we have to exclude those who took everything for the past 50 years.

Here democracy is social justice and social justice is merely the “settling of accounts between the state and civil society” (129).

The sense that democracy involves a “settling of accounts” and that nonelectoral means can be used to disempower a democratically elected official raises important questions. Even if one accepts these claims, one may wonder if the massive opposition-led protests of the past few years or the supermajoritarian victories for the opposition in the December 6, 2015, National Assembly elections may lead to equally legitimate claims of the settling of accounts. After all, if the Chavistas have held and transformed state power in a way that removes privilege from one group in favor of themselves (however numerous they are), could such counterclaims not be justifiable? Political conflict in Venezuela during the past few years, particularly over whether and when a referendum on the presidency of Nicolas Maduro will be held, has been so intense largely because so much is at stake should the Bolivarians lose the presidency. This suggests that much of what has been accomplished could very well be reversed should a new group enter the presidency: that losing the presidency is not simply about the office or even control of a highly centralized budget (including that of the state-owned oil company PDVSA) but about the tremendous influence through dense networks of state-civil society that could be used to empower a wholly different group of political actors with, potentially, fundamentally different interests.

The question is what will happen if the government that sponsored certain types of organizations loses its majoritarian appeal—if the governing party ceases to be the governing party and loses its access to the resources of the state. Furthermore, while many have, not without reason, wondered about the possibility of a Chavismo without Chávez, the more pressing question is whether there is a Chavismo without Chavismo’s occupying the state. The next two books reviewed examine whether it was necessary for Chávez to “take the state” to bring about radical reform (see Spanakos, 2008; Wilpert, 2007).

Mobilization of Collective Action Pre- and Post-Chávez

The profound changes that took place in the organization of civil society and the state are the result of political mobilization and a series of success moments that challenged the fledgling social-democratic-cum-neoliberal conventional wisdom of the 1980s and 1990s. But what accounts for the success (in making changes, not necessarily that the outcomes were positive) of these movements? Most scholars and political analysts have placed considerable emphasis on the role of Hugo Chávez. Luis Fernando Angosto-Ferrández’s Venezuela Reframed, a study of collective battles for indigenous rights, is very clear that the arrival of Chávez in the presidency as well as the political bloc of Chavista supporters was a watershed for the contestation and securing of new rights. George Ciccariello-Maher’s We Created Chávez deemphasizes the role of Chávez by providing a political ethnography of a “rebel” group that long preceded him.

This is an important debate for political and scholarly reasons. The Chavista bases have often been criticized in public discourse as brainwashed—following Chávez as they would a religious figure (for an interesting reading, see Michelutti in this issue)—and thus choosing political action with less reflection and deliberation than their opponents. Correcting this bias is clearly important for establishing the legitimacy of Chavista positions, but understanding the political thinking of supporters is important for scholarly reasons as well. Ciccariello-Maher goes to great lengths to try to prove that “the people” were not suddenly activated by the election and then the mandates of Chávez. He examines a long process of political rebellion in La Piedrita, a particularly politically activist neighborhood in Caracas. At the same time, he rejects a purely bottom-up reading in which the people are the only salient actors. He tries not to give too much explanatory power to the state, but he also wants to avoid the pitfalls of horizontalism, which could “lead to a neglect of leadership . . . [or] exclude a priori those who opted statically to work either within or in close relationship with government institutions” (18). Even so, he is clear that “like Chávez, the new Constitution was the result of popular power, and, like Chávez, it has since served as a foothold for further advances” (245). Popular mobilization therefore precedes Chávez—temporally and causally—making nonelites (not Chávez) the primary agents for radical change. He writes (3),

La Piedrita’s autonomous status is best expressed by the large, hand-painted sign that greets all visitors: “Here La Piedrita gives the orders and the government obeys.” This is no exaggeration: the Chávez government once sent a captain of the military reserves into the zone, who was immediately taken into custody by the collective. When the official protested, explaining that he was merely there to scope out a possible escape route for the president in the event of a repeat of the 2002 coup, the response from La Piedrita was unambiguous: the government does not tell us anything, it must ask.

The anecdote is consistent with Velasco’s portrayal of 23 de Enero (see also Velasco, 2015) and Valencia’s discussion of a reconfiguration of sovereignty, but it seems completely at odds with Angosto-Ferrández’s study of the collective politics surrounding the country’s indigenous struggles (which he insists are plural).

Angosto-Ferrández claims that the transformation in indigenous politics—there is now more space available for their activities, and critical socioeconomic and political rights have been introduced—results from state-supported increased mobilization (21). This is not to deny the impact of such participation on the state (241), but prior to Chávez indigenous mobilization was limited to periodic and reactive politics, unable to establish a sustained and positive agenda (21, 65). Bolivarian mobilization was people-forming in that it produced “a collective subject amalgamated around an overarching political identity but also sustained by strong currents of popular mobilization (not all of them harmonious)” (20; see also Spanakos, 2011). Angosto-Ferrández argues that the inclusion of unorganized indigenous groups occurred in a bottom-up fashion but only once the conditions for such change had been facilitated by the 1998 election and Chávez’s calls for a constituent assembly that would include the previously excluded.

The people-forming of the indigenous groups, according to Angosto-Ferrández, began only after the election of Chávez in 1998. He immediately prompted a referendum to rewrite and replace the constitution. In need of an “organization that could legitimately process and coordinate the election of indigenous representatives,” the National Constituent Assembly gave the National Indian Council of Venezuela, a weak but credible organization, the opportunity to act as “interlocutor with state organs” such as the National Electoral Council for the “selection of candidates for seats allocated for indigenous representations at national level” (74). This position helped the organization secure institutionalization, and along with it came national recognition and legitimacy. Both the constituent assembly and the election of Chávez propelled the indigenous group into an organizational structure with mobilizing force that enjoyed recognition by the state. But there is more.

Chavista bases have also made use of what Angosto-Ferrández calls guaicaipuro, in which indigeneity becomes a “central source for the creation of symbols and signifiers for [Chavista] collective identity” (103). It has been utilized by many local actors who have renamed days, streets, or highways posthumously after indigenous leaders or symbols. More important, it has been used by presidents. As did Chávez, Maduro also “indianized his identity as part of his electoral profile” (160). This strategy is particularly important as it occurs in the context of one of the streams that Angosto-Ferrández identifies as critical for collective action, “the electoral stream.” It exhibits the slow formation of identity that is state-sponsored, a politics of recognition. In contrast to Ciccariello-Maher, Angosto-Ferrández sees the struggle of a marginalized group prior to the 1998 election and even points to its inability to act collectively on behalf of its interests. Perhaps for him it is not that the people have no power but that their power has more often prevailed in the electoral context. He is clear in contending that the “emergence of Chavismo . . . gradually created an indigenous movement” (102) that had not existed before 1998. Before this, there were many actions of disparate groups but not a movement.

Contemporary Questions

The Bolivarian period constitutes an important time of political experimentation (see Hellinger and Spanakos in this issue), an experiment that has consistently appeared precarious (Spanakos, 2015), though current conditions are particularly troubling. Increased democratization and halting liberalism may have been more possible and palatable under Chávez’s leadership, with robust oil prices and a humbled opposition. As these conditions have changed, the institutional context for containing and responding to political conflict has become more polarized and intense. What will happen when a majoritarian movement suffers an extended period in which it no longer has majoritarian support? Will the groups that created Chávez create someone else? Few are claiming that they created Maduro. Will they accept a state that they “created” if the group with which it was designed to “settle accounts” takes control of that state? Or will current efforts to empower popular assemblies and establish a communal state make a return to an opposition-led government impossible or impotent? The books reviewed here give us insight into some of the tensions present when a democratizing movement does not distinguish clearly between state, government, and civil society and the extent to which popular actors might be agents for change. These are questions that are central to the current political crisis in a Venezuela that provides no easy answers.