Venezuela: The Life and Times of the Party System - Political ...

Valencia, Maracay, and Caracas) that only narrowly missed succeeding. Divisions in the armed
forces, especially the army, have not been resolved. 1 Moreover, the popularity of their leaders,
above all Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias who has become something of a popular hero,
poses a continuing challenge to the legitimacy of democratic politics and especially of the party
system.
The mass of the Venezuelan public continues to prize democracy, but people’s
commitment is increasingly shot through with cynicism and a growing rejection of political parties.
Available survey data show consistently strong support for democracy as a political system and
also for the procedural norms and principles of legitimacy on which it is founded. Elections are
widely acknowledged as the most legitimate path for political change and there is broad rejection
of military or single-party rule and strong support for criticism by opposition parties. Although
criticism of governments (as inept or corrupt) increased sharply in recent years, this has no clear
impact on evaluations of democracy generally. Discontent with specific policies or leaders has
thus far been transformed politically into a ‘throw the rascals out’ point of view.
The optimistic implications of this scenario are undermined by growing levels of voter
apathy and abstention which raise serious questions about the long-term viability of a position
that rests its hopes for the future on alternation between the two major parties (thus ejecting a
different set of ‘rascals’ each election). There are not enough data at this point for analysis to
confirm a trend with any degree of confidence. But it is clear that overcoming voter apathy,
creating new, enduring bases for political organization, and democratizing the theory and the
practice of democracy in Venezuela are the central challenges the parties and party system face
in the foreseeable future.
1 On the military in Venezuela, see Daniels (1992) and, in a much more critical vein, Muller
Rojas (1992).