Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy

“Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.” - Oliver Heath, Journal of Latin American Studies
“[T]he authors of this volume provide rich material that sheds light on the novelty of the strategies pursued by Chavista leaders and the knotty issues brought to the fore by their initiatives.” - Steve Ellner, Latin American Politics and Society
“Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy makes it clear that, while transforming the political landscape, the Chávez era also embodies important continuities with the country’s recent past. The serious problems that the country faces and the social movements that support Chávez did not emerge overnight; they are rooted in the inequities of the oil economy that took hold during the twentieth century. This book is a must read for anybody trying to make sense of the ongoing process of change that is remaking Venezuela.”—Miguel Tinker Salas, author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela
“This book evaluates Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela with a clear eye. Through nuanced attention to new empirical research in a rapidly changing context—who speaks, what people believe, who decides, and how power works—it offers a framework for analyzing the intertwined democratic and nondemocratic aspects of politics as it is practiced and lived. This multisited approach—looking from neighborhoods to media, activists to government institutions—could be applied with equal success to the postrevolutionary regimes of Cárdenas or Castro, the populist governments of Vargas or Perón, and the liberal democracies of the present.”—Jeffrey W. Rubin, Boston University
“Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.” -- Oliver Heath * Journal of Latin American Studies *