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High Anxiety in the Andes: The Real Story Behind Venezuela's Woes

The rise to power of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is often seen as evidence of an impending backlash against globalization, Americanstyle capitalism, corruption, and poverty. Chavez’s fiery antiglobalization rhetoric, his strong alliance with Fidel Castro, his outreach to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghaddafi, his anti-Americanism, and his sympathetic overtures to Colombia’s guerrillas and other insurgent groups in Latin America have gained the world’s attention. To many, the case of Venezuela epitomizes the popular reaction to a prolonged concentration of power among a small oligarchy of corrupt politicians and their business allies. To others, Venezuela is the victim of a mysterious syndrome afflicting the countries of the Andean region. Mostly, however, the situation in Venezuela is cited as an early-warning signal of a worldwide backlash against liberal democracy, market reforms, and globalization. Yet a closer look at the Venezuelan case unveils a rather different set of lessons. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Venezuela’s problem is not too much globalization but too little. Its current economic woes and social deterioration are the consequence not of market reforms but of the failure to reform its economy. Its plight has little in common with that of its Andean neighbors. Moreover, the disappearance of the party system that dominated Venezuelan politics for more than four decades was not a sudden, Soviet-style collapse resulting from an excessive concentration of power in the hands of a small clique of politicians; in Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.com), was Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry from 1989 to 1990. He is a former executive director of the World Bank and a senior advisor to its president. He has authored or edited five books and numerous articles on international political economy, economic reforms, and globalization. His article “Latin America: The Second Stage of Reform” was published in the October 1994 issue of the Journal of Democracy.