Chavismo: 21st Century Bolivarian Revolution

An analysis of the domestic and foreign policies of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The essay examines the leader\u27s rhetoric and the rationalization behind his opposition. [It]also looks at the regional relations between Latin American countries and Hugo Chavez

Venezuela, Violence, and the New York Times: Failing When it Comes to Selective Indignation

The Venezuelan protests that emerged in the beginning of 2014 attracted a wide range of academic and media attention to the quality of its reportage. The protests centered upon the nature of the opposition to the current President Nicolás Maduro (2013-present), the successor to former President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (1999- 2013). One of the most controversial issues pertaining to the political unrest was the tone of U.S. media coverage. Supporters of Chavismo claim that the U.S. mainstream media tends to focus on governmental abuses while ignoring the violence perpetrated by the opposition. Despite the widespread attention the crisis has generated, there has been little effort to systematically test the extent to which the violence is attributable to governmental forces and whether or not the U.S. media has accurately and dispassionately covered the events. Creating the first political violence dataset for the Venezuelan crisis, this research aims to measure the extent to which the U.S. media outlet, led by The New York Times, objectively covered the 2014 crisis. Results suggest that although the New York Times accurately reported governmental violence, it significantly underreported opposition violence. The study presented here not only hopes to broaden one’s view of the Venezuelan crisis, but aims to contribute to a wide range of academic and policy studies, including Latin American politics, political violence, and media studies

Hugo Chávez and The Impact of Socialismo del Siglo XXI

This thesis seeks to explain the reoccurring electoral success of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the context of Chávez‟s exposure in the media, specifically, by evaluating his weekly show, Aló Presidente, alongside public opinion data to further develop our understanding of the Bolivarian Revolution and Socialismo del Siglo XXI (21st Century Socialism). Public opinion data from international sources is utilized alongside regional and local surveys to account for any polarization in the reporting by data firms that may have been reflected in the data, otherwise. While the Constitución Bolivariana of 1999 offered an egalitarian, liberal-progressive construction on paper, it also broadly trengthened the Executive, which President Chávez has utilized in undercutting liberal democracy, funding communal programs at the expense of local government, aiding his party‟s clientilistic network, and ultimately consolidating personal political power. Comparing the stated ideals of 21st Century Socialism from the coded Aló Presidente transcripts with popular opinion data concerning the president‟s social Mission programs has led to the conclusion that Chávez is succeeding in selling Venezuelans on the necessity of the Bolivarian Missions programs, which may be a driving factor in his successes at the polls

Populist leadership in the context of globalisation: a comparative study of President Chávez of Venezuela and ex-President Fujimori of Peru

This thesis is an examination of the similarities and differences between ex-President Alberto Fujimori of Peru and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela using the literature on populism to provide a comparative framework. It compares both presidents, in a qualitative manner, by examining the socio-political context in both countries, the causes for the emergence of both regimes, their ideological and programmatic characteristics, and the consequences they have or might have for their respective countries. The thesis is divided up into six chapters, with an Introduction and Conclusion. In the first chapter, the thesis examines the literature on populism in order to construct an analytic framework. The thesis then goes on, in the following chapter, to analyse the historical context from which both presidents emerged. In Chapter 3, the economic and social performance of each presidency is investigated and examined, assessing the extent to which each provides the popular classes of their respective countries with a means to participate in these areas of national life. The fourth chapter presents the strategies used by both presidents to gain and maintain power in their respective countries. The relative authoritarianism and democratic characteristics of each president in analysed and assessed in the following chapter, measuring also the extent to which the people of each country participate politically in their country's affairs. In the final chapter the impact and consequences of each president on the respective case countries is examined

The Socio-Cultural, Relational Approach to Populism

The article presents the relational, socio-cultural approach to populism, also referred to by some as "performative". The approach claims phenomenological validity cross-regionally and is complex enough to provide a theory of populism and its subjective logic, while minimal enough to be used handily by other scholars. Populism is not a set of decontesting ideas or "ideology", but a way of being and acting in politics, embodying in discourse and praxis the culturally popular and "from here", in an antagonistic and mobilizational way against its opposite, together with personalism as a concrete mode of authority. Defined in the most synthetic way, populism is the flaunting of what I typologically call the "low". I also argue that civilizational projects of different kinds create a distasteful "unpresentable other"; populists then claim that this Other is nothing less than the true Self of the nation, its "authentic" people, disregarded in that process. Relatedly, the article introduces the general populist scheme of contending forces, present cross-regionally and in left as well as right populisms, with "the people" facing a three-way coalition: a nefarious minority Otherized; global forces strongly playing in favor of it; a government in line with that minority or alliance. Populism extolls the national pleb "as is" and promise to reconcile the nation with itself by making the plebs the whole. The cultural component of populism should be domesticated by political scientists, since it has deep roots in cleavage formation theory, the sociology of distinction, and updated Gramscian and Weberian sociopolitical analyses

Politics of SouthｰSouth Cooperation：The Venezuelan Project in the Framework of the Bolivarian Diplomacy

Tohoku University博士（法学）博士学位論文 (Thesis(doctor))thesi

The Political Communication of Hugo Chávez: The Evolution of Aló Presidente

Aló Presidente was a weekly television programme anchored and produced by Hugo Chávez during his presidency in Venezuela. The show, a version of a phone-in, was broadcast live on national television at 11am on Sundays and lasted on average six hours. It followed the presidential agenda to a new location every week, where Hugo Chávez would inaugurate factories, read Latin American poetry, interview Fidel Castro, and sing llanero songs. This thesis investigates the role that Aló Presidente played in the making of the “Bolivarian Revolution”, Hugo Chávez’s political project. Through a critical reading of the transcripts of the show, it explores the 378 episodes, or 1656 hours, that aired between 1999 and 2012. Aló Presidente was the cornerstone of Chávez’s political communication, replacing press conferences and interviews. Chávez was known for his continuous presence on radio and television and his daily presidential addresses. However, only on the Sunday show could the audience phone the president and share their ideas, emotions and everyday life concerns. This thesis reviews the narratives that underlined the relationship between the audience/electorate and the host/president on Aló Presidente. It is argued that Aló Presidente played a fundamental role in articulating the identity of a public that shared the values and ideas of Chávez’s hegemonic project. Moreover, it is argued that the show Aló Presidente and the ideological process called the “Bolivarian Revolution” can be read as two co-related arms of a same project, and that they informed and defined each other throughout Chávez’s presidency. In this context, this thesis assesses the evolution of the programme in light of the political events taking place in Venezuela during that time. Aló Presidente is thus seen as a repository, or “black box”, of the discourses that articulated the Bolivarian identity and constructed the legitimacy of Hugo Chávez as the leader of a populist movement in Venezuela. Finally, the core of this thesis is that the co-relation between the show and the hegemonic project evolved over time to strengthen the authoritarian tendencies of Hugo Chávez’s regime. Following the activities of Aló Presidente over 13 years, the investigation charts that evolution in three different stages: 1) participation, 2) education, and 3) obedience, arguing that what started as a seemingly participatory space, progressively became a platform that presented Hugo Chávez’s figure as the ideologue of a populist movement, and ultimately secured his position as the indisputable leader and sole authority of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution”