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Fabiana Sofia Perera, Autocracy rising: how Venezuela transitioned to authoritarianism, International Affairs, Volume 99, Issue 5, September 2023, Pages 2199–2200, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad209
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Extract
How did Venezuela backslide from being an example of Latin American democracy to one of only three autocracies in the western hemisphere? Javier Corrales argues that two key factors explain this transition: the evolution of the party system and the ‘institutional reservoirs’ available to the executive branch (p. 2). Autocracy rising is a timely and important contribution to the study of a country that has been perplexing to policy-makers and under studied by academics.
The book is divided into six chapters, and Corrales begins with an outline of his argument. Then, the following three chapters address the changes in party system, and chapter five includes a comparison with other case-studies that validates the argument. The final chapter expands on a previously overlooked tactic, which Corrales names ‘function fusion’ and identifies as the key to the longevity of the Hugo Chávez–Nicolás Maduro regime. According to the author, function fusion describes a kind of multitasking for twenty-first century authoritarianism, whereby the government grants ‘existing institutions the ability to perform a variety of functions typically reserved for other institutions’ (see Javier Corrales's ‘Authoritarian survival’, Journal of Democracy, 31: 3, 2020). In terms of the book's main argument, the author states that the fragmentation of the asymmetrical party system, alongside institutional capturing, were crucial in bringing about democratic backsliding in Venezuela under Chávez (p. 24). Ultimately, Corrales argues that Chávez benefited from the combination of a unified ruling party and fragmented opposition parties (p. 46). The concept of ‘asymmetrical party system fragmentation’ might seem nearly impenetrable at first, and certainly off-putting to a non-specialized audience. Fortunately, the book's latter chapters develop the concept further and make it much more accessible.
