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

Abstract

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 Chavez\u27s rise to power in 1998. Rather than attributing authoritarianism exclusively to external economic factors, this article demonstrates how the democratization process could not overcome the institutional limitations resulting from the Puntofijo system, ultimately succumbing to deliberate strategies by Chavez and Maduro to concentrate power and reduce democratic constraints