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Describes election of President Hugo Chávez, focusing on the huge gap he must face between campaign promises, political problems, and economic realities.

Describes the Oct. 1996 elections, prospects for democracy in its aftermath, and issues relating to property and privatization.

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I: Antecedents: The Foundations of the Punto Fijo Regime of Representative Democracy -- 1 The Normalization of Punto Fijo Democracy -- PART II: The Actors: Making Political Demands -- 2 Urban Poor and Political Order -- 3 The Military: From Marginalization to Center Stage -- 4 Entrepreneurs: Profits without Power? -- 5 Civil Society: Late Bloomers -- 6 Intellectuals: An Elite Divided -- 7 The United States and Venezuela: From a Special Relationship to Wary Neighbors -- 8 The Unraveling of Venezuela's Party System: From Party Rule to Personalistic Politics and Deinstitutionalization -- PART III: Policy Making and Its Consequences -- 9 Decentralization: Key to Understanding a Changing Nation -- 10 The Syndrome of Economic Decline and the Quest for Change -- 11 Public Opinion, Political Socialization, and Regime Stabilization -- PART IV: Conclusion -- 12 From Representative to Participatory Democracy? Regime Transformation in Venezuela -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Glossary -- References -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

El presente texto resalta la necesidad de medir las diversas cualidades de la democracia. En este sentido, delinea los diferentes tipos de regímenes políticos que se encuentran en la denominada "zona gris"entre la dictadura y la democracia. Asimismo examina las posibilidades de cambio dentro de dicha zona gris. Los autores presentan dos preguntas acerca del cambio político: a) ¿Qué causas hacen que un régimen limitadamente pluralista cambie de curso? b) ¿Cómo podemos predecir la dirección del cambio político en virtud de esa modificación en su curso? Las opciones que se estudian son las siguientes: reequilibrio del régimen limitadamente pluralista, evolución hacia una democracia liberal, adaptación de otra variante dentro de la zona gris y retrogresión hacia el autoritarismo. En este marco, el artículo analiza la caída del régimen punto fijista y el surgimiento de la Quinta República de Hugo Chávez. El análisis sugiere que las crisis en las áreas de distribución y representación mutuamente generan el deterioro político y que el mencionado cambio de curso ocurre si la capacidad reguladora del Estado es débil. La transición hacia una democracia plena puede generarse sólo si las élites gobernantes mantienen un cierto grado de legitimidad. De lo contrario, alguna forma alternativa de la "zona gris" se impone, y su forma depende de la fuerza de la cultura política existente y la existencia de un individuo con autoridad y carisma.Venezuela in the gray zone:From feckless pluralism to dominant power systemAbstractThis paper emphasizes the need to measure the varying qualities of democracy. It delineates subtypes of political regimes that occupy a "gray zone" between dictatorship and democracy, and examines the possibilities for political change in the "gray zone". The authors address two sets of questions about political change: a) What causes a limitedly pluralist regime to unravel? b) How can we predict which direction political change will take in the wake of that unraveling? The options considered are: re-equilibration of the limitedly pluralist regime, evolution into a liberal democracy, movement toward another regime variant within the gray zone, and retrogression to authoritarianism? Demise of Venezuela's Punto Fijo regime and the emergence of Hugo Chávez's Fifth Republic are examined using this framework. Analysis suggests that mutually reinforcing crises in the issue areas of distribution and representation lead to political decay, and that unraveling occurs if the state's regulative capability is weak. Transition to full democracy may take place if the ruling elites retain a quotient of legitimacy. If not, some alternative form of "gray zone" regime takes hold, its form dependent on the strength of the existing democratic political culture and on the availability of an individual possessing charismatic authority.

In this introduction to the volume of collected essays, the editors locate the book within literature of democratic transition that emphasizes the need to measure the quality of democracy to delineate subtypes of democratic & quasi- democratic regimes as the study of "hybrid" regimes placed in "gray zones". The demise of Venezuela's Punto Fijo democracy signaled the end of a limited democracy that suggest transition to a hybrid combining pluralism & authoritarianism, representation & direct democracy, capitalism & statism. The themes of the volume are contextualized in previous literature from the perspective of the normalization of Venezuela's second wave democracy as a limited pluralist polyarchy that illuminates the unraveling of the democracy, the use of the statecraft edition, & political learning. The political economy perspective draws out implications of rentier states unsuitability for boom-bust patterns of single commodity economies, & recent work on class conflict. Although no single approach satisfactorily explains the Punto Fijo experience, this volume draws on structural approaches emphasizing political economy, institutional approaches emphasizing political choices, & cultural explanations emphasizing mediating political orientations & political learning to close with an assessment of whether Venezuela's gray zone political regime represents a new model of participatory democracy or a neo-populist model that may gain currency throughout the regions in situations in which representative democracy has been slow to satisfy basic human needs & lost its legitimacy. References. J. Harwell

Venezuela's contemporary politics poses a problematic different from those predominating in the literature on democratization. Scholarly research in the last decade focused first on the crisis of authoritarian rule and the ensuingtransitionto civilian governments, with the reestablishment of electoral procedures, and, more recently, on the problems of theconsolidationof a democratic regime, including alternation in power, universal acceptance of the rules of the game, and generation of a democratic political culture.The challenges confronting Venezuela are not those of transition or consolidation but, rather, the decomposition — ordeconsolidation— of an established democratic regime. In other Latin American countries in recent decades, longstanding models of statist development developed crises that led, in turn, to complex transformations in the economy and in society. One consequence of these changes was that authoritarian regimes began a transition to more democratic forms of governance.

This study examines the case of the Brazilian debt rescheduling agreement of 1988 as a two-level game in which each of the two main negotiators—the Brazilian state and the international bank advisory committee—must satisfy its own constituents while trying to negotiate an international agreement. It is argued that the interaction between the domestic and international levels must be understood in order to explain the outcomes of international debt negotiations. This article draws on Robert Putnam's concept of the two-level game in international politics and on a wider literature concerning the influence of domestic political considerations in international negotiations to demonstrate that such an analysis can explain the process and outcome of the 1988 agreement, where a unitary negotiating level fails to predict the final result. The two-level model explains how domestic constraints and opportunities affect international outcomes, and it highlights the importance of the ratification process.