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The Radical Potential of Chavismo in Venezuela

The circumstances surrounding Hugo Chaivez's pursuit of power and the strategy he has adopted for achieving far-reaching change in Venezuela are in many ways without parallel in Latin American politics. While many generals have been elected president, Chavez's electoral triumph was unique in that he was a middle-level officer with radical ideas who had previously led a coup attempt. Furthermore, few Latin American presidents have attacked existing democratic institutions with such fervor while swearing allegiance to the democratic system (Myers and O'Connor, 1998: 193). From the beginning of his political career, Chaivez embraced an aggressively antiparty discourse. He denounced the hegemony of vertically based political parties, specifically their domination of Congress, the judicial system, the labor and peasant movements, and civil society in general. Upon his election in December 1998, he followed through on his campaign promise to use a constituent assembly as a vehicle for overhauling the nation's neocorporatist political system. He proposed to replace this model with one of direct popular participation in decision making at the local level. His actions and rhetoric, however, also pointed in the direction of a powerful executive whose authority would be largely unchecked by other state institutions. Indeed, the vacuum left by the weakening of the legislative and judicial branches and of government at the state level and the loss of autonomy of such public entities as the Central Bank and the state oil company could well be filled by executive-based authoritarianism. From the outset of the presidential campaign in mid-1997, Chaivez's rivals harped on the threat his candidacy posed to the nation's liberal democracy as part of a scare campaign without parallel in modern Venezuelan electoral politics. This negative characterization was reflected in articles published in the