2005 SUMMER RESEARCH REPORT

Entire Summer 2005 Article

Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant
Andrés Felipe Villamizar

Report on Summer Research in Venezuela

My research interest in Venezuela is focus on the state of democracy in this country and the development of the participatory dimension established in the 1999 Constitution. In this context my final goal is a comparative analysis of democracy in Venezuela and Colombia. In doing this I spent the summer in Colombia and Venezuela to advance my research.

In Venezuela I arranged some interviews with scholars and established contact with some others to keep conversation by e-mail and telephone. The scholars with whom I established contacts are Rodolfo Magallanes (UCV), Arturo Sosa (Universidad Católica del Táchira), Margarita López Maya (UCV), Luis Salamanca (UCV), Carlos Romero (UCV), Roger Atwood (UCV-Georgetown), Ramón Piñango (IESA).

I continued my research of bibliographic material, specially in the library of the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) and the National Library, looking for historical antecedents of the political structure of Venezuela and the emergence of Hugo Chávez Frías and his Movimiento V República (MVR). I also researched the structure of the State in the 1999 constitution and the development of the participatory component of the constitution. On the other hand, I researched the electoral results in the last few elections and some surveys on political issues to analyze some dimensions of institutionalization of political parties and party systems in the country. With these tools one can approach elements like stability of the political system and support to parties, legitimacy of the democratic institutions and connections of the leadership with the population. Seeing at these elements one can see that since the election of president Chávez in 1998, his popularity and political support in elections has been stable. Table 1 shows the national results by parties.

The chavista support, specially the MVR, have maintained a constant percentage of votes in the different elections since 1998. Table 1 also demonstrates that this support is greater when the personal image of president Chávez is in stage (presidential elections in 1998 and 2000 and the referendum in 2004). On the other hand, the opposition has maintained an important stability and in the political competitions with president Chávez (this is, presidential elections of 1998 and 2000 and the referendum in 2004) have been increasing its percentage of votes from 31.48% (1998) to 40.64% (2004). Nevertheless, it is not appropriate to talk about institutionalization of the opposition as a whole. First, the great volatility in the opposition's results from election to election show that their support is not stable. Second, and related with the last point, the important weight of the opposition in those elections where the contradictor is Chávez himself and not some political parties indicates that this strength is based on personal opposition to Chávez and not any degree of institutionalization. Finally, the disappearance of parties within the opposition from one election to another gives another signal of instability and low degrees of institutionalization. In summary, the electoral data showed in Table 1 shows that instability is the rule in the political arena in Venezuela and that the party system is not institutionalized. If one wants to talk about electoral stability, probably the only party would be MVR and in lesser degree MAS.

Regarding participatory democracy the data shown in Table 1 gives some contradictory perceptions. First, the high levels of abstention show extremely high levels, specially in municipal elections (2000 and 2005), but on the other hand, in four different occasions citizens have voted a highly participatory tool since 1998. These are the two referendums for the constitution in 1999, the "referendo sindical" in 2000 and the presidential referendum in 2004. Second, in the majority of the elections after the approval of the new constitution the abstention was lower that the average for elections in 1998. This is important since the new constitution abolished the mandatory vote established in article 110 of the 1961 constitution.

I also focused my research on the conception of democracy of the 1999 constitution and the perception and development of this notion throughout these years. I spent part of my time in Caracas studying the process of the weakening of the traditional parties in the period previous to the emergence of the MVR and the debate of that time regarding the necessity of reforming the structure of the state and the political system. I focused in the work of the "Comisión Presidencial para la Reforma del Estado" (COPRE) that was established by president Rafael Caldera in the 1970's and worked until 1988 searching for some recommendation to change the structure of the sate and the political system. In my paper I will make a comparison of the most important recommendations of COPRE with the actual changes that took place in the 1999 constitution. It will be a key element in the paper analyzing the process of restructuring the state as a long historical evolution more that an individual conception of the state by Hugo Chávez.

In the new structure of the state in Venezuela the notion of democracy takes a more profound approach. By denominating Venezuela as "Estado Social de Derecho" and not just "Estado de Derecho" the 1999 constitution changed the whole notion of the state and by introducing the participatory democracy in the country the constitution implies a new dimension to politics and democracy itself. In this sense is important to mention the perceptions of Venezuelans regarding democracy that makes sense in this new approach of the bolivarian constitution. For 81% of the Venezuelans democracy is the preferred political system and they believe that the most important characteristics of democracy should be equality, rights, and social justice (35%) . This point is reinforced by the 2004 Latinobarómetro that ranks Venezuela as the second country in Latin America with more support to democracy (74%), after Uruguay.

Reinforcing the notion of "Estado Social de Derecho" the government established social missions addressed to excluded sector of the Venezuelan society. During my stay in Venezuela most of the scholars agreed with the importance of these missions, specially "Barrio Adentro", because of the social benefits that implies. Nevertheless, some of them emphasized in the importance of generating some kind of social and political control to the resources used in the missions, because they do not seem to have any broad organization or structure. Interesting enough, I went to Táchira where I interviewed several Colombian and Venezuelan "ganaderos" that complained about the efficiency of the mission because, for them the missions were incrementing the laziness of the workers that just want to be paid by the government and not to work. With these contradiction around the effectiveness of the social missions and the importance that Venezuelans give to social justice in democracy and the fact that Venezuela constitutionally is "Estado Social de Derecho", a deeper analysis will take place in my paper.