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The Legal Death Of The Latin American Democracy: Bolivarian Populism’S Model For Centralizing Power, Eliminating Political Opposition, And Undermining The Rule Of Law, Frank M. Walsh

Frank M Walsh

Over the past decade, Hugo Chavez has remade the Venezuelan polity into his own image, centralizing power and undermining his rivals. The most striking feature of the changes in Venezuelan government is the fact that the changes have been made through ostensibly legal mechanisms; that is, Chavez used Venezuelan democratic institutions to centralize power. Chavez’s blueprint for power-centralization is straightforward: (1) he convened a constitutional constituent assembly to rewrite the previous constitution, (2) he created a doppelganger Congress and Supreme Court, gradually transferring power from the existing Congress and Court to the new institutions, and (3) he dissolved the original …