This excellent collection, originally published in Spanish in Venezuela, originated in a conference held in Caracas in November 1992. The introduction and conclusion by William Smith and Jennifer McCoy provide an overview of the issues and bring the analysis up to early 1995. The essays, focusing on the period since 1989, examine the sources of recent instability and the prospects for the democratic system that evolved from the 1958 Pact of Punto Fijo.
Chapters by Terry Karl, Juan Carlos Navarro, and Miriam Kornblith are somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of balancing popular demands and neoliberal economic reforms in a democratic context. Navarro points out that the shattering of the multiclass consensus makes reform difficult, and Kornblith stresses the challenge of balancing the public and private sectors in the face of conflicting economic interests. Karl argues that all the democratic systems that were grafted onto petrostates have suffered, because positive political learning was subverted by the rentier mentality, corruption, bloated bureaucracies, and state subsidies that accompanied high petroleum revenues. Economist Luis Zambrano Sequín is more optimistic that a new balance can be struck between an open economy, with petroleum and energy resources at its center, and measures that can minimize social suffering.
Several of the essays suggest that scholars should avoid simplistically posing the question of whether Venezuelans support democracy or prefer dictatorship. David Myers uses recent Venezuelan public opinion polls to demonstrate that there is no overwhelming popular consensus for either a free market economy or a planned economy, and certainly not for a military government. Felipe Agüero adds that the thorough quashing of the two 1992 military uprisings has dissuaded potential golpistas from believing that the constitutional system will fall easily.
Brian Crisp, Daniel Levine, and Juan Carlos Rey propose that scholars distinguish between democracy and effective democratic institutions before they evaluate whether or not “democracy” is “working.” They conclude that Venezuela’s social democratic system and evolving civil society (a theme Luis Salamanca explores more fully) have moved the nation’s political culture far from the traditional societies of ascription. Michael Coppedge adds that because political parties with centralized decision making work well in other nations, Venezuela’s problem may be less the actual centralization than its exaggerated degree. These essays reject a Manichean choice between political legitimacy and economic restructuring in favor of a more nuanced examination of the possible space for political and economic reform.
In sum, this collection throws light on the origin and development of the Venezuelan crisis, but also has relevance for the study of other fragile democracies in the hemisphere and in Eastern Europe.
