Interest groups in Venezuela: lessons from the failure of a ‘Model Democracy’ and the rise of a Bolivarian democracy

• Date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1410
• Published date: 01 November 2014

■Special Issue Paper

Interest groups in Venezuela: lessons from

the failure of a ‘Model Democracy’and

the rise of a Bolivarian democracy

Leslie C. Gates*

Department of Sociology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, USA

This article uses the Venezuelancase to shed light on the potential role of interest-group systems in discrediting liberal

democracies and to identify challenges that the region’s democracies are likely to confront in constructing effective

and fair interest-group systems. It first analyzes the role Venezuela’s interest groups played in discrediting its 40-year

two-party democracy. Itargues that the discrediting of a system heralded by many as the region’s‘model democracy’

cannot be understood by merely assessing how the structure of the group system excluded certain groups. The study

shows that the inclusion of certain business interests in visible positions of power also helped discredit the two-party

democracy. The article then compares theabove system with the new groupsystem which has emergedsince 1998 as part

of a new democratic systeminspired by Latin America’s 19th centuryLiberator, Simón Bolívar. This comparison reveals

that the current systeminverts the former system of inclusionand exclusion, even as it has retained a numberof the old

system’s less virtuousfeatures. The implicationsof the Venezuelancase for the region’sdemocracies are elaboratedin the

conclusion. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The role of interest groups in Venezuela over the

past 50 years provides insight into their ability to

discredit even liberal democratic systems. It also

signals a number of challenges that the region’s

democracies are likely to face in configuring inter-

est-group systems that present fair and effective

means of representation. The Venezuelan case offers

these insights because it is both a case of a liberal

democratic system that became discredited and one

involving two very different interest-group systems

that share common challenges. Broadly speaking,

the Venezuelan case affirms a number of common

elements in Latin America’s interest-group systems

that are identified in the introductory article to this

Special Issue. These include: a history of politicalelit-

ism even within liberal democracies, the continued

practice of political leaders selectively incorporating

certain segments of society and their groups into the

political arena (often referred to as corporatism and

associated with the region’s populists from the early

20th century), and a history of political corruption.

Specifically,the analysis presented in the succeeding

discussions first examines the role that interest groups

played in discrediting Venezuela’s earlier two-party

democracy (1958–1998). Most scholars contend that

the country’s interest groups failed to underpin what

many considered a ‘model democracy’because they

failed to represent nume rous important social con-

stitu encies, largely by excluding them from the formal

political process.However, I contend thatthe explan-

ation also requires an assessment of which interests

were included and prominently visible within the

political establishment. My study shows why the

inclusion of leading elements of business in this two-

party democracy undermined efforts to overcome

the public’s view of the government as corrupt and

unresponsive. Thispaved the way for the riseof Hugo

Chávez and the new interest-group system that has

emerged since he took office in 1999. On the basis of

this analysis,the article draws out some of the vulner-

abilities that architects of today’s Latin American

democracies might want to avoid.

Second, the analysis compares the emerging con-

tours of Venezuela’s current interest-group system

with those of its predecessor.This comparison reveals

that the current system can be understood as invert-

ing the formersystem of inclusion and exclusioneven

as it has retained a number of the old system’sless

virtuous features. This second analysis points us

*Correspondence to: Leslie C. Gates, Department of Sociology,

Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA.

E-mail: lgates@binghamton.edu

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 14 Number 3 pp 240–253 (2014)

Published online 21 February 2012 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1410

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.