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Interest Groups In Venezuela: Lessons From The Failure Of A “Model Democracy” And The Rise Of A Bolivarian Democracy, Leslie C. Gates
Interest Groups In Venezuela: Lessons From The Failure Of A “Model Democracy” And The Rise Of A Bolivarian Democracy, Leslie C. Gates
Sociology Faculty Scholarship
This article uses the Venezuelan case to shed light on the potential role of interest group systems in discrediting liberal democracies and to identify challenges the region’s democracies are likely to confront in constructing effective and fair interest group systems. It first analyzes the role Venezuela’s interest groups played in discrediting its forty-year two-party democracy. It argues that the discrediting of a system heralded by many as the region’s “model democracy” cannot be understood by merely assessing how the structure of the group system excluded certain groups. The study shows that the inclusion of certain business interests in visible positions …