Venezuela's Authoritarian Turn: From Institutional Foundations to Democratic Collapse

Resumen

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Venezuela's path to authoritarianism through the lens of institutional development and democratic decline. The analysis traces how democratic institutions established after 1958 were built on fundamentally flawed foundations, elite capture, personalism, clientelism, and exclusion, which created structural weaknesses systematically exploited after Hugo Chávez's rise to power in 1998. Rather than attributing authoritarianism solely to external economic factors, this article demonstrates that the democratization process could not overcome the institutional limitations imposed by the Puntofijo system, ultimately succumbing to deliberate strategies by Chávez and Maduro to concentrate power and reduce democratic constraints.