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Lessons from Venezuela's democratic collapse: How opposition movements can defy autocratic leaders

Until the 1990s, Venezuela was home to one of the most established democracies in Latin America. Today, however, it stands as one of the region's most firmly entrenched authoritarian regimes.

How did this shift occur, and what can other countries learn from Venezuela's transformation?

A new paper from political scientist Laura Gamboa at the University of Notre Dame chronicles the country's 25-year evolution, during which Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, destroyed a system of checks and balances, ended competitive elections, terminated political rights and civil liberties, and harmed or killed scores of political opponents along the way.

"The Venezuelan case provides several lessons for countries whose democracies are just beginning to erode," Gamboa said. "It shows that you should use all of the institutional spaces you have while you have them. Not leveraging those spaces is a mistake."

How Hugo Chávez seized power

Venezuela's democracy began to erode in 1999, when newly elected President Hugo Chávez convened a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution for the country—a power grab that was carried out without the approval of the National Congress.

Yet even after this power grab, the anti-Chavista coalition still controlled media outlets, exerted influence over the armed forces and the state-owned oil company, held seats in the legislature, received support from courts and oversight agencies, and had the ability to mobilize Venezuelans into the streets. Despite a significant presence within democratic institutions, the opposition chose instead to resist the erosion of democracy through radical strategies: a 2002 coup and the 2003 oil strike to push Chávez to resign.

These strategies cost the opposition important bureaucratic and state resources because they gave Chávez the reason he needed to purge the military, fire oil company managers, and use oil revenues to buy domestic and international support, Gamboa said.

"Using tactics like coups, boycotts or strikes can be effective ways to protest a government, but they can backfire when you leverage them against a popular and democratically elected president."

By 2006, the anti-Chavista coalition had lost most of the institutional resources that had previously been available, such as an independent media, and Chávez had asserted more power by appointing loyalists to oversight agencies and the country's courts. And yet, the opposition won back some elected offices in 2008 and 2015 and was able to use those elected offices to highlight some government abuses.

"We see from these successes that when you use institutions, there can be a good payoff," Gamboa said.

Opposing Nicolás Maduro

Gamboa's analysis showed that in recent years, even operating amid tight constraints, the opposition movement created opportunities to push against autocratization—for example, through Venezuela's 2024 presidential elections.

Though incumbent Nicolás Maduro declared victory amid widespread accusations of fraud, and despite several countries—including the U.S.—denouncing official results, opposition leader María Corina Machado announced that tallies from more than 70% of the country's voting stations showed that Maduro's opponent, Edmundo González, had received 3.5 million more votes than the president.

"No one expected Venezuela to have elections," Gamboa said. "The opposition competed even though their ability to compete was diminished, and they won even though the odds of winning were very small. Yes, the regime clamped down, but it's significant that the opposition was able to express itself in an electoral space."

While the 2024 election results suggest that winning an electoral contest is possible in a highly authoritarian environment, Gamboa said, an election win is not enough to guarantee a transition to democracy.

"If the opposition chose to leverage both institutional and non-institutional strategies and use them together, that would probably be more powerful," she said.

The author of "Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies Against the Erosion of Democracy," Gamboa has studied Venezuela since 2013. Her published in a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on democratic erosion, was informed by extensive fieldwork that included interviews and archival research.

Overall, Gamboa said, the case of Venezuela shows that democratic backsliding is a highly uncertain process, and more research on newer forms of autocratization and opposition strategies is needed. She is currently working on a book related to these issues, focusing on how regime type affects opposition strategies and their effectiveness.

"In the past two decades, we have seen a significant decline in democracy across the world," she said. "Democracies have eroded into authoritarian regimes, and formerly weak autocracies have become more entrenched. For opposition movements in both of these cases, Venezuela offers lessons and hope."