Fluent Essays

In the last few years, democratic recession has been particularly troubling in the Andes as populist parties/leaders have emerged in response to the public’s frustration and discontent with weak democratic institutions and performance and increasing dissatisfaction with corrupt and incompetent government. In Peru, for example, there have been five presidents in the last 3 years with the last six presidents accused of corruption. Populism became the answer to the failings of the previous democratic governments, as in Bolivia and Venezuela. As with all populist movements and leaders, the rise to power through free and fair elections but once in power politicize and dismantle democratic institutions and process that impeded the populist from consolidating authoritarian rule on behalf “of the will of the people.” Answer the following questions: 1. What are the particular challenges of democratic governance and how do they open opportunities for populist “political entrepreneurs”? 2. Colombia’s political and economic development is seen to be different than the rest of the Andes – take, for example the long-standing conflict/violence in Colombia. What are the similarities/differences between Colombia and the rest of the Andes? 3. Finally, what explains authoritarian survival in Venezuela? 400 - 500 words You must cite (on the text) the sources used/consulted MUST use BOTH attached files as sources as well as BOTH websites below https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/five-challenges-facing-ivan-duque-at-his-presidencys-halfway-point/ https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/perus-problem-is-bigger-than-not-having-a-president/ Latin America’s Shifting Politics: The Peace Process and Colombia’s Elections Laura Gamboa Journal of Democracy, Volume 29, Number 4, October 2018, pp. 54-64 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: For additional information about this article [ Access provided for user 'samijo1' at 20 Feb 2021 14:59 GMT from Florida International University ] https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0062 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705717 https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0062 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705717 The Peace Process and colombia’s elecTions Laura Gamboa Laura Gamboa is assistant professor of political science at Utah State University. She is currently working on a book that examines opposition strategies against democratically elected presidents who try to under- mine checks and balances and stay in office, effectively eroding democ- racy. Her work has been published in Political Research Quarterly and Comparative Politics. As his two terms in the presidency neared their end in 2018, Juan Manuel Santos might have expected that he would be enjoying high standing among his fellow Colombians. Having won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his role as leader of a peace deal with the long-running leftist insurgency known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Co- lombia (FARC), Santos could fairly claim to be leaving his country of fifty-million people a better democracy than it had been when he first took office in 2010. The peace agreement is Colombia’s most important achievement in recent decades. Signed in November 2016, the accord ended an armed conflict that had gone on for more than five decades. Thousands of former combatants have demobilized, and Colombia has become a less violent place. Despite the international accolades that he received, however, little credit seemed to reflect on Santos at home. In April 2018, his ap- proval rating was an abysmal 23 percent.1 In the March congressio- nal elections, his Social Party of National Unity had come in fourth in lower-house races and fifth in Senate races. But worse was yet to come. In the June runoff for the presidency, Santos would watch voters give the office to a 42-year-old one-term conservative senator named Iván Duque, the handpicked candidate of Santos�s greatest rival, for- mer president Alvaro Uribe (2002–10). Duque, whose main campaign promise was a vow to take apart the peace accord, led a seven-candi- date field in the May 27 first round with 39 percent of the vote. Then he defeated Gustavo Petro, the left-wing former mayor of Bogotá, in Journal of Democracy Volume 29, Number 4 October 2018 © 2018 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press Latin America’s Shifting Politics 55Laura Gamboa the June 17 runoff with 54 percent. How did this inexperienced can- didate who railed against one of Colombia’s greatest achievements become president? Duque’s victory was the outcome of a perfect storm. During the first round of voting to fill the presidency, party-system deinstitution- alization, the peace process, and the end of the FARC’s career as a violent guerrilla movement all worked against moderate candidates. Veteran centrist politicians who counted on traditional political elites to lift them to victory found themselves reduced to also-rans. A coali- tion farther to their right led by Uribe pushed them aside in terms of voter appeal and elevated Uribe’s protégé Duque. At the same time, something similar was unfolding on the left, as a more extreme candi- date (Petro) outflanked and outbid more moderate (though still left-of- center) options. The “flight from the center” continued as Duque and Petro moved to the runoff, the latter with a quarter of the first-round vote as compared to Duque’s nearly two-fifths of it (in order to claim the presidency in the first round, a candidate’s vote share must exceed 50 percent). During the runoff campaign, the dire situation in neighboring Ven- ezuela became a more salient topic, to the leftist candidate’s detriment. Both Duque and Petro ran radical-populist campaigns with authoritarian undertones and disturbing implications for democracy. Yet once they entered the runoff, it was Petro who was effectively depicted as a “Hugo Chávez in the making.” Politicians, business leaders, and news outlets with a record of having opposed Uribe found Petro so threatening that they endorsed Duque. They presented the uribista candidate as the lesser of two evils, rallying non-uribista voters of the center and center-right to cast their ballots against Petro. Since the 1990s, Colombia has seen its party system deinstitutional- ize. Demographic shifts, institutional reforms, decentralization, changes in clientelistic structures, and the security crisis of the 2000s withered party brands. The once-dominant Liberal and Conservative parties be- came shells of their former selves. The political-party scene in Colom- bia is now volatile and ideologically fluid.2 In 2018, three of the five ma- jor contenders for the presidency were independents who had gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot.3 No one ran as the candidate of President Santos’s Social Party of National Unity. On the right-hand side of the political spectrum, former presi- dents Uribe and Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002) used backroom deals to organize a multiparty primary—an electoral contest among dif- ferent parties’ or movements’ presidential nominees, with the goal of choosing a single coalition candidate. The contenders were Marta Lucía Ramírez (who had Pastrana’s endorsement), Iván Duque (who had Uribe’s), and Alejandro Ordó~nez (a socially conservative former inspector-general). Although Colombia has had intraparty primaries 56 Journal of Democracy since 1988, this marked the first use of this mechanism in order to make a selection from among presidential nominees of different par- ties and movements. The Primary The primary was held on 11 March 2018, the same day as the con- gressional elections. Duque, running as the candidate of Uribe’s Demo- cratic Center (CD) party, emerged as the overwhelming winner of the three-way race, garnering more than two-thirds of the votes cast. The primary drew a turnout equaling 17 percent of the country’s entire reg- istered electorate, a record. Duque was not a well-known figure. Prior to 2014, he had held ju- nior posts at the Development Bank of Latin America, the Colombian Treasury Department, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the UN. Elected to the Senate on the CD ticket in 2014, he remained large- ly invisible until 2016. That year, he joined Uribe in leading the “no” side in the campaign preceding the October 2 referendum on the peace deal. Voters were asked simply, “Do you support the final accord for the termination of the conflict and the construction of a stable and last- ing peace?” Arguing against the deal on the grounds that it gave FARC leaders immunity from punishment and guaranteed the organization ten seats in Congress, the rejectionists carried the day by the narrowest of margins: 50.2 to 49.8 percent with a 37.4 percent turnout (somewhat low by recent Colombian standards). Duque campaigned almost entirely on his uribista credentials. Claim- ing that things had become worse in Colombia over the past eight years, he called for strengthening the armed forces to fight factions within FARC (as well as other leftist guerrillas) who would not lay down their arms. He also said that he wanted to reduce and streamline taxes in order to improve the climate for entrepreneurship and investment; fight impunity by reforming the peace deal’s transitional-justice provisions; uphold family values by opposing same-sex marriage; and end the cor- ruption that he associated with the Santos administration. While Duque presented himself as a conservative, free-market, technocratic candi- date, his mentor Uribe was openly populist, calling Duque’s foes “unpa- triotic” agents of castrochavismo.4 As the 2018 campaign began, former Antioquia governor Sergio Fa- jardo was positioned as an outsider candidate on the center-left. A math- ematician by training who had served from 2012 to 2016 as chief execu- tive of Colombia’s second-largest province and before that as mayor of Medellín, Fajardo was without ties to traditional parties or politicians. Although supportive of the peace process, he spoke mostly of the need to fight corruption and clientelism. To Fajardo’s left, Petro used signatures to get on the left-wing multi- 57Laura Gamboa party primary ballot. He too backed the peace process, but his main con- cern was reducing socioeconomic inequality. With the armed conflict receding into the nation’s rear-view mirror, issues such as corruption and poverty—27 percent of the populace still lives below the national poverty line of US$85 per month—have become more salient.5 Petro addressed these concerns. He promoted tax reform, land redistribution, free college, single-payer healthcare, environmental protection, a move away from extractive industries, and the renegotiation of trade deals. On paper, his platform resembled those on which moderate left-wing presi- dents in the region such as Chile’s Michelle Bachelet or Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had successfully run. Yet Petro resembled Uribe, his ideological opposite, in his populist, polarizing, and even authoritarian style. Until 2017, he had publicly de- fended Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.6 As Bogotá’s mayor, he had been given to going around the city council, implementing poli- cies that it had rejected. In 2012, he appointed as director of the city’s television channel a political ally who was later accused of interfering with programming in order to silence Petro’s critics.7 As a presidential candidate, Petro framed his program as a fight between “the people” and sinister “mafias” of which, he claimed, he was a victim. Following the trend of potential autocrats of both the right and the left, he also pro- posed to convene an assembly to change the 1991 Constitution.8 The first round also featured a center-right politician (Germán Var- gas Lleras) who resembled Santos and a veteran centrist figure (Hum- berto De la Calle). Both had roots in the old Liberal Party, which used to join the Conservative Party in defining Colombian politics. Vargas Lleras positioned himself as the candidate of non-uribista conserva- tives, a competent figure with an appreciation for free markets, a wary but respectful attitude toward the peace process, and moderate stances on sensitive social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. De la Calle was the winner of the Liberals’ primary. He wooed centrist voters by mixing a fairly conservative economic agenda with liberal positions on social issues, but the real pivot of his campaign was his support for the peace deal. A former vice-president, interior minister, and Supreme Court justice, the 72-year-old De la Calle had been Santos’s handpicked chief negotiator in dealings with the FARC. The accord was the culmi- nation of a lifetime of public service, and De la Calle was determined to defend it. Throughout 2017, it seemed as if Vargas Lleras was on a glide path to the runoff. He was leading in the polls, and was the choice of traditional politicians at both the national and subnational levels. His endorsements were impressive, spanning 55 Conservative, Liberal, Radical Change, and Social Party of National Unity leaders spread across thirteen of the country’s 32 departments.9 This had been the winning formula for San- tos four years earlier. Colombia’s party system has undergone deinsti- 58 Journal of Democracy tutionalization, but not to the extent seen in Peru or Venezuela. During the 2000s, the Liberals and (to a lesser extent) the Conservatives still won regional elections, and local party leaders remained important to anyone who wanted to win nationwide. In 2014, Santos finished second in the first round, but rescued his candidacy by making promises to local elites, who then got out the vote for him.10 Turnout went up 8 percent- age points in the runoff, and Santos won reelection with 51 percent of the vote. The expectation was that such methods would work for Vargas Lle- ras and (to a lesser extent) De la Calle in 2018, but they did not. The deepening process of party-system deinstitutionalization and the over- all “antipolitics” environment in Colombia had weakened party elites’ ability to move votes. De la Calle’s campaign never took off. Hindered by divisions among Liberals and the baggage of his role in forging the peace agreement, he received 2 percent of valid votes. Vargas Lleras started stronger, but he polled only 7 percent on election day. The re- gional and local leaders whom he knew so well proved unable to help him sway voters. The Peace Process While the unraveling of the party system mattered, the dispute over the peace process mattered even more. After close to five years of talks that began in 2012, the guerrillas had agreed to demobilize and disarm, cut their ties with the drug trade, and assist efforts to promote substi- tutes for illicit crops. In return, the government agreed to boost rural investment, formalize land ownership for smallholders, restore land stolen during the armed conflict, and lower entry barriers for political participation. The bargaining teams also agreed to a transitional-justice framework that would offer reduced or alternative sentences (working in crop-substitution efforts, for instance) to any offenders—whether com- batants, agents of the state, or civilians—who confessed their crimes and told the full truth about them. Their imperfections and implementation challenges notwithstanding, the 2016 agreements were an unprecedented achievement, and marked an important step forward for Colombia’s democracy. The peace ac- cords demobilized more than seven-thousand combatants.11 Homicides, kidnappings, and terror attacks fell to historic lows. In 2018, for the first time ever, FARC took part in an election solely as a political party. According to Freedom House, Colombia’s democracy has improved six points since 2010 (from 59 to 65 on a 0–100 scale). For the first time, it scores (slightly) above the Latin American mean (64.5). According to V-Dem’s democracy indices (0–1 scale), Colombia’s electoral (0.69), liberal (0.53), participatory (0.49), deliberative (0.57), and egalitarian democracy (0.39) scores reached their highest levels ever in 2016. This 59Laura Gamboa trend is even more impressive if we keep in mind that, according to the same indicators, democracy in Latin America as a whole has stagnated and even declined since the years from 2003 to 2007. Despite these achievements, the peace negotiations had uneven sup- port. The talks met with a warm international response: The UN, the Or- ganization of American States (OAS), the EU, and the United States all endorsed the deal. At home, however, the country was split. To back the accord, President Santos built a loose coalition of the center and center- left. His own Social Party of National Unity joined Radical Change, the Liberals, the Greens, the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole, and even some Conservatives and former Uribe supporters in the effort. To fight the deal, Alvaro Uribe built a much tighter coalition that brought together Social Party of National Unity dissidents, most Conservatives (including Andrés Pastrana), and several new right-wing politicians such as Iván Duque. Based on Uribe’s charisma and continuing ability to appeal to voters, his own CD party became the face of opposition to Santos and the peace process. Peace deals often require making concessions that the public will find unpalatable. Uribe�s campaign skillfully exploited some of these conces- sions. His coalition charged that the government was negotiating “behind people’s backs.” He criticized the decision to sit down at the table before the FARC had agreed to a unilateral ceasefire, and labeled the administra- tion “unpatriotic” for treating equally FARC ex-combatants and members of the armed forces accused of committing human-rights abuses. Uribe’s coalition also denounced the proposed transitional-justice arrangements, charging that they would leave FARC crimes unpunished while the ex- guerrillas went into electoral politics with plans to bring the ideas of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez to Colombia.12 Most of these criticisms of the prospective peace deal were mislead- ing, untrue, or unfair, but the former president’s strategy paid off. In the 2014 elections, Uribe’s coalition became the second-largest in the 102- seat Senate and in Congress as whole. The CD itself held 19 Senate seats (including a seat for Uribe himself) plus 19 seats in the 172-member House of Representatives. The CD’s 2014 presidential nominee, for- mer senator and finance minister Oscar Zuluaga, beat Santos in the first round 29 to 26 percent, and lost the runoff to him by less than a million votes out of 14.7 million cast. The Uribe coalition’s most stunning triumph was yet to come, how- ever. On 2 October 2016, it won its narrow victory in the popular vote on the peace agreement. The “no” camp waged an emotional campaign, turning the ballot into a referendum on the Santos administration and touching on topics—traditional family values and pension reform—that had nothing to do with the accords, but which moved voters.13 The peace deal nonetheless survived after additional revisions and a fresh signing ceremony, winning the approval of a congressional major- 60 Journal of Democracy ity in November. Yet the referendum defeat undercut the accord’s legiti- macy and created serious obstacles to its implementation. A key revision put Congress in charge of implementing the deal through legislation—a move that has made the peace process subject to the vagaries of politics, fueled uncertainty about the government’s ability to keep its promises to ex-combatants and victims, and raised the stakes of future elections. Santos and his bloc came out of 2016 weakened, while Uribe’s coali- tion got a boost. For populists such as Uribe, polarization works well. Not only does it increase cohesion, but it makes voters less likely to pun- ish or even notice misleading statements or antidemocratic behavior.14 The polarization surrounding the peace process, as well as the uncer- tainty regarding the implementation of the agreements moving forward, became potent electoral tools for Uribe. They allowed the ex-president to undercut more moderate conservatives, who mostly supported the peace deal even as they tried to avoid becoming too closely associated with it. Uribe was able to build a cohesive and disciplined coalition with strong electoral machinery behind it. Between 2014 and 2016, Uribe became the undisputable leader of the Colombian right. His strength could be read in the relative newcomer Duque’s 2018 primary defeat of Marta Lucía Ramírez, a right-wing pol- itician with a long resumé and the backing of former president Pastrana. Duque had only been in the Senate since 2014, and had never held elec- tive office before that. His only meaningful credential in the presidential race was the unreserved endorsement of Alvaro Uribe—but that was all he needed. Once it was clear that Duque was going to represent them, the uribistas rallied behind him. Fully 96 percent of the municipalities that Zuluaga had carried in 2014 voted for Duque, as did 95 percent of those that had voted against the peace deal in 2016. The Rise of the “Farther” Left If Duque’s triumph over Ramírez on the right was surprising, so was Petro’s over Fajardo on the left. In principle, Fajardo as the more cen- trist of two left-wing contenders had the better chance to defeat Duque. Yet in order to win the first round while remaining viable in the run- off, Fajardo had to cater to two very different audiences. The end of the FARC as an armed group allowed Petro to move left on social and economic issues without being associated with armed struggle. Petro’s program energized left-wing voters, but in doing so it presented Fajardo with a dilemma. If he put himself forward as a moderate, he would im- prove his chances in a possible runoff against Duque, but at the risk of losing left-wing support in the first round as leftist voters flocked to Petro. Conversely, if Fajardo endorsed more radical leftist proposals to improve his chances against Petro, such stances would hurt him in the runoff against Duque. 61Laura Gamboa In the end, Fajardo chose to run as a moderate independent without strong leftist or rightist overtones. The consequences were severe. The 11 March 2018 left-wing multiparty primary between Carlos Caicedo (Citizen Force) and Petro (Humane Colombia) raised the latter’s pro- file, costing Fajardo crucial left-wing support. Officially, the Alterna- tive Democratic Pole had endorsed Fajardo, but in practice many party members instead backed Petro.15 A former M-19 guerrilla who had led that movement to disarmament talks in 1990, the 57-year-old Petro had served a total of fifteen years in Congress and the Senate before becom- ing the capital city’s mayor in 2012. In short, he was a credible left-wing leader with a long track record in politics. In the May 27 first round, he won 70 percent of the municipalities that the Pole’s presidential candi- date had carried in the 2014 first round. Fajardo won only 21 percent of these districts. The May 27 first round made Petro the first left-wing politician to reach a presidential runoff since Colombia adopted the two-round sys- tem in its Constitution of 1991. His success reconfigured the contest. On the right, the peace process took a back seat. Worried by Petro’s left- wing agenda and authoritarian tendencies, the Social Party of National Unity, Radical Change, and the Liberal Party—theretofore unfriendly to Uribe and backers of the peace deal—threw their full weight behind Duque. Business leaders and some major newspapers that had supported Santos rallied to Duque as well. At this point, the worsening of the Venezuelan crisis played an essen- tial role. In 2016 and 2017, President Nicolás Maduro deepened authori- tarianism in Venezuela. In the latter year, there were 2,902 arbitrary detentions and 397 deaths at the hands of state agents.16 At the same time, according to IMF figures, Venezuela was experiencing 13,860 per- cent inflation. The Venezuelan human-rights group PROVEA reported that 90 percent of Venezuelans could not afford their daily food. The humanitarian and political crisis unfolding in a neighbor hit home hard: Colombia shares a border of more than 2,200 kilometers with Venezu- ela, and as of June 2018, in excess of 800,000 Venezuelans had crossed into Colombian territory.17 Uribe and his followers have long drawn parallels between their country and Venezuela. They have claimed that Santos and his allies are castrochavistas, have painted themselves as victims of state repression akin to the Venezuelan opposition, and have warned that Colombia is on the brink of suffering a fate similar to the one that the self-proclaimed “Bolivarian socialist” Hugo Chávez and his heirs visited on their own country. There is no evidence to support these uribista charges. Yet with the situation across the border in Venezuela spiraling downward and Petro reaching the runoff at home, the rhetoric of the uribistas gained traction. Politicians and voters who had backed Vargas Lleras or De la Calle in the first round as alternatives to uribismo now rallied behind 62 Journal of Democracy Uribe’s man Duque in the runoff. A divided left was powerless to coun- ter this alliance as Fajardo refused to back Petro, and instead joined De la Calle in calling for voters to cast null ballots. Voters shifted rightward, giving Duque a 54 to 42 percent runoff victory. He claimed 74 percent of the municipalities that Vargas Lle- ras had taken in the first round. Meanwhile, Petro won 60 percent of the municipalities that Fajardo had taken in the first round. In the end, Duque’s share of Vargas Lleras’s voters was larger than Petro’s share of Fajardo’s. What to Expect Moving Forward Over the past eight years, Colombia’s democracy has moved for- ward. The peace process significantly improved the quality of Co- lombian democracy. Violence became rarer, and the political arena became open to new movements and ideas. Petro garnered the largest vote share of any left-of-center candidate in Colombian history. Now there is uncertainty, however, and backward movement is pos- sible. Duque is, to put it bluntly, a lightweight entirely reliant on Alvaro Uribe for his support. It is unlikely that Duque will imitate Juan Manual Santos by distancing himself from his political godfather. It is also un- likely that the uribistas will carry out their vow to dismantle the peace accord, but they can be expected to stall and weaken its implementa- tion. Uribe’s disregard for democratic institutions, human rights, and civil liberties remains a concern, as do his ties to large landowners and paramilitary groups. The continuing influence wielded by these forces threatens to hinder the peace process and promote antidemocratic insti- tutional changes. Their influence could also thwart the fight against security threats that are becoming increasingly lethal. Since 2017, human-rights organizations have been trying to sound the alarm regarding the assassinations of hu- man-rights advocates, social leaders, and former FARC members. In 2017 alone, there were 167 such homicides.18 These killings are the work of criminal groups that exploit the absence of strong state institutions in the poorest regions of the country. In order to enhance democracy and truly end violence, Colombians need to address the economic, political, and institutional inequalities that foster such violent illicit organizations.19 The chances of anything like that happening under an uribista administration are vanishingly small. As for the left, its future is cloudy. On the one hand, Petro’s suc- cess in reaching the runoff might be seen as having laid the groundwork for a united opposition front. The FARC’s disarmament has given par- ties of the left and center-left space to approach the voters with ideas about social and economic policy that have heretofore been little heard in Colombian electoral politics. On the other hand, Petro is a highly 63Laura Gamboa polarizing figure, and center-left and leftist politicians may not wish to follow his lead. Some have already suggested that they do not wish to join a possible multiparty pro–peace accord coalition in Congress with him at the helm. While willing to strike deals on specific bills, they have stated they wish to strengthen their own respective party labels while maintaining a more centrist position regarding political developments. Perhaps we will witness developments similar to those in Brazil a de- cade and more ago. There, Lula made two runs for the presidency from the left only to fall short, then moderated his rhetoric and agenda. In par- ticular, he vowed that he would honor Brazil’s debts and refused even to flirt with policies pointing toward default. Moderation turned out to be Lula’s ticket to the Planalto Palace: He won a massive 61 percent runoff victory in 2002 and repeated the performance four years later.20 Were Petro to follow a similar course—move away from populist proposals that threaten democratic institutions, unambiguously condemn left-wing dictatorships in the region, and rebuild ties with other leaders on the left and center-left—he might gain a better shot at reaching the Colombian presidency and opening up more and better avenues for change. NOTES 1. “Gallup Poll 2018,” April 2018, www.elespectador.com/sites/default/files/pdf- file/0061-18020410_gallup_poll_124.pdf. 2. Juan Albarracín, Laura Gamboa, and Scott Mainwaring, “Deinstitutionalization Without Collapse: Colombia’s Party System,” in Scott Mainwaring, ed., Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse (New York: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2018), 227–54. 3. A candidate who lacks (or does not want) a party endorsement can get on the ballot by gathering a number of signatures equal to 3 percent of the valid votes cast for that same office in the most recent election. 4. Juan Esteban Lewin, “¿Qué dice de Uribe que su candidato sea Duque?” La Silla Vacía, 13 December 2017, http://lasillavacia.com/que-dice-de-uribe-que-su-candidato- sea-duque-63931. 5. Juan Carlos … Authoritarian Survival: Why Maduro Hasn't Fallen Javier Corrales Journal of Democracy, Volume 31, Number 3, July 2020, pp. 39-53 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: For additional information about this article [ Access provided for user 'samijo1' at 20 Feb 2021 14:58 GMT from Florida International University ] https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0044 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/760086 https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0044 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/760086 Why Maduro hasn�t Fallen Javier Corrales Javier Corrales is Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Sci- ence at Amherst College. His books include Fixing Democracy: Why Constitutional Change Often Fails to Enhance Democracy in Latin America (2018) and (with Michael Penfold) Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez (second edition, 2015). The autocratic regime that began forming in Venezuela under the late President Hugo Chávez two decades ago, and which has hardened under his successor Nicolás Maduro, has been by world standards both a typical and an unusual case of democratic backsliding. It has been typical in that the erosion of democracy has been led by the executive branch, and has happened via an incremental process that was ambiguous at first and has been polarizing all the way. It has been atypical, however, by dint of the sheer extent of the democratic backsliding that has taken place.1 The drop in level of “democratic-ness” from where Venezuela was a quarter-century ago to where it is now has been profound. It is hard to find recent cases of democratic decline anywhere in the world that can match Venezuela’s fall, though perhaps Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega might bear comparison. The process of democratic backsliding has not been without opposi- tion. Maduro, who took office as designated successor when Chávez died of cancer in March 2013, has faced political resistance from oppo- sition parties, the media, civil society, elements of the military, and in- ternational actors. He came to office not through a primary, but because Chávez had handpicked him to be the next leader of what Chávez called “Bolivarian socialism.” Maduro won the April 2013 presidential elec- tion by a slim margin amid conditions of questionable electoral integ- rity, suggesting a weak mandate. He has presided over one of the most devastating national economic crises seen anywhere in modern times. His approval ratings have sagged consistently, while the opposition’s electoral fortunes have surged, as exemplified by its victory in the 2015 National Assembly balloting. Massive street protests broke out in 2014 Journal of Democracy Volume 31, Number 3 July 2020 © 2020 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press Authoritarian Survival 40 Journal of Democracy and 2017. Since 2019, Maduro’s regime has had to cope with heightened financial sanctions levied by the United States, the European Union, and most countries of the Americas. These pressures, indeed, have been such that one could argue Maduro should have fallen by now. The regime could still unravel at some point, but its seven-year survival is impressive. How has it managed to hang on? The most obvious answer is that Maduro has survived because he has turned more authoritarian. He inherited a semi-authoritarian regime, and he has hardened it. But to make this point analytically useful, we need to specify the authoritarian prac- tices that have allowed Maduro to survive as long as he has. Here we might take a step back and look at the global context. Over the past decade, more democracies have been acquiring features of au- tocracies, and more autocracies have been hardening their authoritarian practices.2 As they attempt to autocratize, these regimes, like Madu- ro’s, often confront political resistance. Some autocratizing presidents manage to survive and neutralize this resistance, thus becoming more authoritarian. Others, by contrast, lose the battle, which can interrupt, slow down, or even reverse the process of democratic backsliding. What explains the survival of autocratic practices in the face of resistance? Part of the answer is that new autocratic-survival tools are appearing. These need more study. One that is particularly noteworthy in connec- tion with Venezuela is what I call “function fusion.” This particular authoritarian tactic consists of granting existing institutions the ability to perform a variety of functions traditionally reserved for other institu- tions. Function fusion gives autocratizing presidents an added means of surviving and possibly overcoming resistance. We have long known that autocracies commonly try to ride out eco- nomic and political shocks with such time-tested survival tactics as reinforcing control of institutions, turning more repressive, attacking civil society, intensifying surveillance, harassing opposition leaders, channeling resources to regime cronies, and deepening ties with other autocratic states.3 All these means remain available to autocrats today. Function fusion is a new arrow in the autocratic quiver, however. In essence, this maneuver consists of taking existing institutions and assigning them roles typically associated with other institutions. Thus it “fuses functions” in novel ways, as when groups in civil society are turned into paramilitaries, and armed forces into economic actors. Function fusion “Function fusion”—granting existing institutions the ability to perform a variety of functions traditionally reserved for other institutions—gives autocratizing presidents an added means of surviving and possibly overcoming resistance. 41Javier Corrales appeals to autocratizing states because it allows them to lean less on tradi- tional methods—especially naked military repression—that are now seen as likely to bring too many negative consequences down on the regime. Because function fusion allows more sparing use of traditional autocratic methods, it has rising appeal as a survival tool. Function fusion has been the hallmark of Venezuela’s transition from semidemocracy under Chávez to full-fledged authoritarianism under Maduro. Chávez was famous for turning PDVSA, the country’s state- owned oil company, into a multitask organization dedicated to financing the ruling party, rewarding loyalists, funding welfare programs, acting as an employer of last resort, and securing trade deals with foreign al- lies. Maduro has continued this tactic, but has taken function fusion to new heights, applying it to the military, which has been allowed to di- versify its portfolio of activities; organized civilian groups, which have been given the function of conducting quasi-military operations as well as criminal activities; a constituent assembly, which has acquired the function of legislature and ruling party combined; and foreign armed forces, to which Maduro has given a share of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Traditional Autocratic Practices From the start of his administration, Maduro has faced a number of se- vere crises. While none on its own seems lethal, in combination they have added up to more than most democratically elected governments could likely handle. One way in which Maduro has responded to the multiple crises has been to adopt or reinforce conventional autocratic practices. The first crisis was Maduro’s declining electoral competitiveness. He barely won the 2013 presidential election, and then went on to a stun- ning defeat in the 2015 legislative election. His popularity dove. Maduro dealt with the problem by expanding the number of electoral irregulari- ties. He blocked a call for a recall referendum, and held fraudulent elec- tions for a constituent assembly. In 2019, his government manipulated the presidential-election timetable and voting centers, used government handouts to coopt voters, banned candidates and parties, and refused to do real audits in response to vote-fraud charges. Another crisis was triggered by loss of control over the legislature in the 2015 election. Maduro responded with two classic authoritarian moves: He illegally packed the courts before the newly chosen lawmakers could sit, and then relied on these courts to back him when he refused to recognize any of the legislature’s acts. He raised blizzards of technicalities, fabrica- tions, and court rulings, backed by his friendly judges at every turn. Then there was the crisis inside the military. Chávez had been briefly unseated by an April 2002 putsch, and Maduro has long claimed to be under threat from a “continuous coup.” There is no doubt that Maduro has faced significant discontent across the 160,000-strong armed forc- 42 Journal of Democracy es. This has prompted him to crack down hard. There are reports that any officer “in touch with the opposition” can be arrested, with threats against family members in turn.4 By mid-2019, the regime held 217 ac- tive and retired officers (including twelve generals) in prison, many of them without trial. Since 2017, there have been at least 250 cases of torture committed against military officers, their relatives, and opposi- tion activists.5 Reports suggest that Cuban security forces were in 2008 specifically directed to train a government unit, known as the Director- ate General of Military Counterintelligence, devoted to spying on the armed forces.6 Operation Gideon, the armed assault that failed to unseat Maduro in early May 2020, illustrates the extent of both military disaffection and state-sponsored surveillance. This plan by about three-hundred ex- iled Venezuelan military officers based in Colombia called for invad- ing Venezuela by sea and toppling Maduro. The endeavor was aided by a U.S. security firm and had some support from civilian opponents of Maduro. The landing attempt, which in the end consisted of around sixty people, would not have been possible without military defections. Among the reasons it failed was the degree to which Maduro had man- aged to infiltrate it. His forces were ready and intercepted the two inva- sion boats. Next on the list of troubles is Venezuela’s grave economic contraction. Ongoing since at least 2014, it has been the worst economic crisis that Latin America has seen since 1945, with deprivations resembling war- time conditions. To survive, Maduro has wielded a typical authoritarian’s tool: rampant cronyism. He has granted economic elites and close asso- ciates privileges such as access to the best foreign-exchange rates, con- tracts to import food for the government’s distribution programs (known as CLAP), significant degrees of impunity, and most recently, control of gold mines (placed in the hands of regime-friendly governors).7 Finally, Maduro has had to outlast rising street protests. To deal with the massive nationwide protest waves of 2014 and 2017, his government reached for those most traditional forms of repression—brute force and censorship. Venezuela saw levels of repression not seen in Latin America (with the possible recent exception of Nicaragua) since the early 1980s. The Venezuelan human-rights group Foro Penal reports that by the end of July 2017, the number of people who had been killed while protesting was 133. (Of these, 101 had been “directly assassinated” during demon- strations.) The regime had also made 5,061 arbitrary arrests, and held 620 political prisoners as of July 31.8 Censorship has risen, aided by Chinese technology. In 2017, the government hired a Chinese telecom company (ZTE) to develop a national identity card, named Carnet de la Patria, capa- ble of tracking citizens’ social and political behavior. Everyone must have one of these cards to qualify for food assistance as well as access to pen- sion benefits and subsidized oil. The government also offers cash prizes 43Javier Corrales to encourage citizens to apply for the card. As many as eighteen-million Venezuelans are cardholders.9 It appears that since the onset of the co- vid-19 pandemic, media censorship has intensified. Internet-content and access blockage now extends to portals covering the spread of the disease, including even websites maintained by the World Health Organization.10 The Uses of Fused Functions To his conventional authoritarian expedients, Maduro has added the more novel method of function fusion. This concept is not new to the social sciences, nor is it necessarily something that goes on only under authoritarianism: Democracies too have seen institutions manipulated and distorted to serve goals other than the ones that they were originally established to serve. For instance, democratically elected governments often use social spending to buy votes; “fine tune” the instruments of macroeconomic policy to affect electoral outcomes; and manipulate in- formation to deflect criticism. Likewise, authoritarian regimes often in- corporate or “mimic” democratic practices, for instance by allowing the use of elections to fill some offices, or by permitting certain aspects of media independence to survive. Function fusion is related to but also different from this type of in- stitutional blending. It is related in that the state deliberately blends in- stitutional functions that one typically does not expect to go together. It is different in that the fusion takes place not by importing institutions from other regime types, but by blending the functions of institutions within the same regime type. Let us consider some examples. The first involves the military. Every authoritarian regime needs military support. Maduro’s regime has it, but with some unconventional twists. In Venezuela today, “the military” means not only the standard military establishment (compris- ing both professional and ideologically oriented soldiers), but also four other groups, each with its own interest in supporting Maduro. Beyond the standard military there are first the military politicians who fill high civilian posts. As of 2020, eight members of Maduro’s 33-member cabi- net, as well as seven of the nineteen governors who belong to the ruling party, are active or retired military. Then there are the generals who are running at least sixty state-owned corporations. Until April 2020, these included PDVSA, which is the world’s largest oil concern in terms of proven reserves and until recently was one of the few enterprises in Venezuela capable of earning export income. Alongside the soldiers, the soldier-politicians, and the soldier-manag- ers, Maduro has created two classes of profit-seeking soldiers. One is in- volved in legal business activities; the other pursues illicit as well as licit gains. Since taking power in 2013, Maduro has founded fourteen busi- ness concerns that the military owns outright (as distinguished from state- 44 Journal of Democracy owned civilian firms that military officers manage). These are not the first such enterprises in Venezuelan history, but the number before Maduro was small. Maduro’s military businesses are involved in car sales, bank- ing, clothing, printing, construction, farming, the media, mining, subsi- dized foods, transport, and even water distribution. In addition, soldiers have been encouraged to establish their own pri- vate firms to do business with the state. The Organized Crime and Cor- ruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) estimates that the family of General Vladimir Padrino López, who is the uniformed head of the military as well as the defense minister, owns two-dozen companies in the United States and Venezuela as well as U.S. real estate worth millions of dol- lars. The OCCRP has also reported on what it calls “The 35 Club,” a group of Venezuelan generals who since 2004 have founded 41 private companies and secured 220 state contracts.11 On the illegal side, Maduro has allowed the military to engage in lucrative illicit dealings.12 These include controlling informal domestic markets, smuggling consumer goods such as gasoline into Brazil and Colombia, and working with the Andean drug trade (it is estimated that a quarter of Colombian drug exports pass through Venezuela).13 More recently, members of the military appear to have become involved in the illegal export of gold.14 While some analysts find U.S. charges concern- ing the Venezuelan military’s illicit dealings overstated, few experts deny that the military is involved in such activities, or that officers take part in them without much fear of punishment. Civilians as Soldiers—and Gangsters? Another institution that has become fodder for function fusion is the network of civilians whom the ruling party has organized into what are known as colectivos. In Venezuela, this term signifies groups of civilians whom the government encourages—and even pays—to terror- ize political dissidents. These armed bands have become a hallmark of Maduro’s rule. The regime began using them in the early 2000s under Chávez. As the government’s popularity has decreased under Maduro, the state’s need to rely on colectivos has increased.15 Today, the col- ectivos comprise mostly ruling-party followers, paid civilians, moon- lighting police officers in plain clothes, delinquents, and assorted thugs, sometimes even former convicts.16 The government hires them infor- mally to carry out some of the dirtiest forms of repression. Distributed across low-income neighborhoods throughout the country, these groups can be sent into city streets quickly. Altogether, colectivos may control as much as a tenth of the country’s urban space.17 Deployed mostly to handle protests, colectivos are especially good at intimidating people who gather for small neighborhood demonstrations or rallies. In Venezuela, street protests have been nationally organized 45Javier Corrales and coordinated (as in 2014 and 2017), but also small and dispersed, occurring in neighborhoods throughout the country and not necessar- ily coordinated by national-level politicians. These smaller protests have included street meetings, marches, and labor strikes. A study by a Venezuelan NGO documents their dramatic proliferation (see the Fig- ure). Maduro has preferred to deal with these protests via the colectivos rather than uniformed police or soldiers.18 The colectivos show up un- announced and armed. They ride motorcycles and their faces are often covered. Their street clothes make it hard for reporters to certify that they are government-backed operatives. This gives the state “deniabil- ity” when the colectivos threaten (or use) violence. Colectivos have thus become the unofficial “sheriffs” or gangs in particular neighborhoods, especially low-income ones. In return for sup- pressing protests, they have freedom to commit ordinary felonies such as armed robbery, burglary, drug dealing, smuggling, and extortions of both businesses and private persons.19 In the economy of “twenty-first– century socialism,” where scarcity is severe and business opportunities are few, the chance to engage in criminality with near-total impunity has turned out to have an appeal for many civilians. This is especially so when all that is needed to earn such impunity is doing the job that the state wants done against protesters. Why does the state give to civilians certain functions associated with, on the one hand, the military, and, on the other, criminal syndicates? 5,338 5,483 4,410 9,286 5,851 6,917 9,787 12,715 16,739 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 N u m b er o f P ro te st s Figure—Protests in Venezuela, 2011–19 *Approximately 68 percent of protests in 2014 and 82 percent in 2017 formed part of na- tional-level protests. Source: Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social (various years). * * 46 Journal of Democracy The reasons are likely two: The colectivos spare the government embar- rassment, and they ease the minds of officials worried that ordinary sol- diers (who face the same hardships as others who dwell outside favored regime circles) are not loyal enough to Maduro to be trusted with the task of repressing fellow citizens. Before the 2000s, books on the military hardly discussed the pos- sibility of institutional and functional diversity within the state’s secu- rity apparatus. The standard view was to agree with Max Weber that states pursue a monopoly of violence within their respective territories. Today, however, the diversification of state coercion, or what political scientists are calling the new oligopoly of state violence, is the preferred norm among undemocratic regimes and failed states.20 Maduro’s regime is a good example of it. When a legislature refuses to go along with an executive branch, the most autocratic solution is of course the autogolpe or self-coup: The executive closes the legislature and seizes all governmental power. But self-coups, like instances of sending “the uniforms” to assault civilians, are embarrassingly high-profile and bring a lot of negative publicity. Alberto Fujimori tried one in Peru in 1992 and got away with it for a time, but eventually ended up in jail. Maduro’s alternative to a self-coup has been the Constituent National Assembly (ANC). Maduro acquired the problem of a nonsubservient legislature after voters in December 2015 gave the opposition a 109-seat supermajority in the 167-seat unicameral National Assembly. Initially, the government began reducing the legislature’s powers through the Supreme Court. Four opposition deputies had their elections challenged, thus stopping the supermajority. Then came a ruling that no legislation can affect any other branch of government, thereby blocking most bills. The Court also ordered the arrest of several deputies, and finally, in March 2017, took over legislative functions completely, on the claim that the National As- sembly was in violation of the Constitution. Then, in May 2017, Maduro came up with the idea of using a constitu- ent assembly to bypass the legislature. Invoking the 1999 Constitution’s Article 347, which grants the people the right to convene a constituent assembly, Maduro organized a highly irregular constituent-assembly election. He carried out no consultations before making his announce- ment, and there was no referendum (there had been one in 1999) on whether to call a new constitution-writing body into being. According to one poll, 85 percent of respondents favored sticking with the existing constitution.21 On election day, some citizens, mostly regime loyalists, were allowed to vote for multiple candidates, and opposition participa- tion was restricted. Everything took place, moreover, in a context of massive unrest. Forty countries refused to recognize the new body. To no one’s surprise, once the ANC came into being, it gave itself power to make laws. Perhaps more surprisingly, albeit in line with 47Javier Corrales function fusion, it also began acting as a national supreme court, an election authority, a foreign ministry, and a politburo. As a court, the ANC barred opposition candidates from running for office and stripped National Assembly president Juan Guaidó of his parliamenta- ry immunity. As an electoral body, the ANC has made decisions about elections, including announcing that there will be no 2020 presiden- tial election despite demands from the opposition and most Western countries. As a foreign ministry, the ANC has made pronouncements about policy toward the United States and toward other Latin Ameri- can countries. As a politburo, the ANC has handed down political prin- ciples and policy directives to the entire ruling party. For instance, the ANC has fired a cabinet member (Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Díaz) who criticized the administration, created truth commissions to investigate human-rights charges, and offered opinions on tax policy and military affairs. In addition to the opportunity to carry out a self-coup through other means, function fusion as it relates to the Constituent Assembly has allowed Maduro to give a fiefdom to one of the ruling party’s most im- portant leaders, Diosdado Cabello. Considered by Chávez as a possible successor and long seen as Maduro’s top internal rival, Cabello wields influence with crony capitalists, Bolivarian ideologues, and various sections of the military. Function fusion has allowed Maduro to keep Cabello within the fold. As ANC president since 2018, Cabello stands at the head of a national-level political organ with extraordinary pow- ers. Like Cabello, many other ruling-party members—Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, among them—hold seats in the ANC, an outcome achieved through electoral tricks. As of June 2020, the ANC has been in place for three years and still shows no sign of producing a new constitution. In 1999, when he was keen on giving the country a new basic law, Chávez accomplished the entire process in less than eight months. Under Maduro, having the ANC act variously as a legislature, a court, and a party organ has taken prece- dence over the work of drawing up a new constitution. Sharing Sovereignty Authoritarian regimes have been known to host and support foreign armies within their territories. Maduro has gone further by also shar- ing sovereignty with such armies. This has been Maduro’s approach to elements of two radical-leftist guerrilla groups from neighboring Colombia. One group is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colom- bia (FARC), and the other is the smaller Army of National Liberation (ELN). Each came into being in 1964 and long waged war against the government of Colombia, which has a border with Venezuela more than 2,200 kilometers long. In 2012, Colombia sought an end to the guerrilla 48 Journal of Democracy conflict by opening peace talks, which produced an accord with FARC in late 2016. Talks with the ELN continue. The forces that Maduro and various subnational authorities have been sheltering in Venezuela are dissident FARC and ELN splinter groups. They have rejected the peace process, and claim to be continuing their operations against the government of Colombia from within that coun- try’s neighbor. Maduro has not only permitted them to stay, but has been allowing them to wield powers similar to those of sovereign governments. This sharing of sovereignty with foreign guerrillas is most visible in the gold-mining industry. With world oil prices declining and Venezu- ela’s oil sector collapsing around the time Maduro became president, the government began looking to gold to make up the gap. Exports other than oil were few, and Venezuela has large gold reserves, especially in the vast Orinoco Mining Arc that covers 112,000 square kilometers (about an eighth of Venezuela’s total area) stretching across the country from west to east south of the Orinoco River. In November 2018, Mad- uro estimated that his “Gold Plan” could yield as much as US$5 billion in profit.22 Maduro has given dissident FARC and ELN factions freedom to operate in the Cuba-sized Mining Arc.23 These guerrillas have access to illicit export channels through which at least some of the gold can be sold abroad despite U.S. sanctions.24 Dissident FARC and ELN groups are allowed not only to run their own mines and keep substantial revenues (a type of privatization), but also to control a range of related activities. These include selling gold both within Venezuela and abroad; deciding which other groups, legal or illegal, also get to mine; collecting unofficial taxes from both legal and illegal miners; and most important, controlling the people who live in these areas. Inside their mineral fiefdoms, it is up to FARC and ELN elements to provide security (or not), to control borders, to decide who can work in the mining sector, and even to provide local citizens with social services. Some reporters have documented similar “state” ser- vices being provided by foreign guerrillas in the interior states of Ama- zonas, Apure, and Táchira.25 These foreign guerrillas also are known to commit human-rights abuses with impunity. In controlling large portions of Venezuela’s extractive industries out- side the oil sector, these foreign armies (and by extension, the Venezue- lan state) are also sharing sovereignty with colectivos and even criminal syndicates that also mine and market gold. Human Rights Watch reports that each mining enterprise in the state of Bolívar has its own violent criminal syndicate.26 Local citizens engaged in private mining have re- ported preferring “to sell to the syndicates because the soldiers often take part or sometimes all of their gold.”27 Criminal syndicates and foreign armies are now the dominant armed forces in these regions, and hence what passes for the law there. The gangs and the guerrillas are de facto quasi-states operating within a na- 49Javier Corrales tion-state. Maduro can count these nonstate groups as coopted; they give …