SUMMARY

Following more than a century of almost uninterrupted authoritarian rule a presidential system was established in Venezuela in 1959. By withdrawing its support for the authoritarian strongman Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the military, in spite of its intimate past with the Venezuelan political leadership, secured the country’s transition to democracy. Since the first democratic elections were held in 1959, the country’s two main political parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI), have dominated the Venezuelan political scene. A pattern of ‘protest voting’, by which the two leading parties alternated in office, was broken with the 4 December 1988 presidential election of the AD candidate Carlos Andrés Pérez. When Pérez replaced AD party colleague Jaime Lusinchi as president after a decisive victory, he was the first to ever have been elected for a second presidential term. The Social Democrat AD had pursued strong welfare policy programmes financed primarily through oil-money, but when Pérez took office the ongoing economic crisis demanded the implementation of austerity measures.

The financial program decreased standards of living among the Venezuelan population who took to the streets in protest. Near daily protests over economic policies, labour strikes and clashes between security forces and students provided the backdrop against which two attempted coups were launched in 1992. The Revolutionary Bolivarist Movement-200 was a nationalist movement with the aim to establish ‘a junta of national reconstruction’ to deal with economic problems, social disparity and corruption. Up until this point, the military had not shown any aspirations to intervene in the political process since the country’s transition to democracy. Pérez managed to survive the coup attempts, but was in mid-1993 forced out of office in a corruption scandal. He was ordered to stand trial for the misappropriation of public funds, for which he was later sentenced to prison. Presidential elections were held soon thereafter, reinstating Rafael Caldera Rodríguez as president in early 1994. Rodríguez, under the banner of a newly formed coalition party, effectively ended the dominance of the two traditional parties over Venezuelan politics, which aided Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez Frías in his ascent to power. Pardoned by Rodríguez for his participation in the first of the two 1992 coup attempts, Chávez succeeded him as president in 1999. With Chávez, an increased militarization of the public sphere has taken place, with more political power being devolved to current and former militaries.

The Government of Venezuela has been involved in the intrastate and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.