A critical look at the Chavez regime from a leftist Venezuelan perspective, this account debunks claims made by Venezuelan and U.S. rightists that the regime is antidemocratic and dictatorial. Instead, the book argues that the Chavez government is one of a long line of Latin American populist organizations that have been ultimately subservient to the United States as well as multinational corporations. Explaining how autonomous Venezuelan social, labor, and environmental movements have been systematically disempowered by the Chavez regime, this analysis contends that these movements are the basis of a truly democratic, revolutionary alternative.

For four decades, Venezuela prided itself for having one of the most stable representative democracies in Latin America. Then, in 1992, Hugo Chávez Frías attempted an unsuccessful military coup. Six years later, he was elected president. Once in power, Chávez redrafted the 1961 constitution, dissolved the Congress, dismissed judges, and marginalized rival political parties. In a bid to create direct democracy, other Latin American democracies watched with mixed reactions: if representative democracy could break down so quickly in Venezuela, it could easily happen in countries with less-established traditions. On the other hand, would Chávez create a new form of democracy to redress the plight of the marginalized poor? In this volume of essays, leading scholars from Venezuela and the United States ask why representative democracy in Venezuela unraveled so swiftly and whether it can be restored. Its thirteen chapters examine the crisis in three periods: the unraveling of Punto Fijo democracy; Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution; and the course of "participatory democracy" under Chávez. The contributors analyze such factors as the vulnerability of Venezuelan democracy before Chávez; the role of political parties, organized labor, the urban poor, the military, and businessmen; and the impact of public and economic policy. This timely volume offers important lessons for comparative regime change within hybrid democracies. Contributors: Damarys Canache, Florida State University; Rafael de la Cruz, Inter-American Development Bank; José Antonio Gil, Yepes Datanalisis; Richard S. Hillman, St. John Fisher College; Janet Kelly, Graduate Institute of Business, Caracas; José E. Molina, University of Zulia; Mosés Naím, Foreign Policy; Nelson Ortiz, Caracas Stock Exchange; Pedro A. Palma, Graduate Institute of Business, Caracas; Carlos A. Romero and Luis Salamanca, Central University of Venezuela; Harold Trinkunas, Naval Postgraduate School.

The study of institutions, a core concept in comparative politics, has produced many rich and influential theories on the economic and political effects of institutions, yet it has been less successful at theorizing their origins. In Fixing Democracy, Javier Corrales develops a theory of institutional origins that concentrates on constitutions and levels of power within them. He reviews numerous Latin American constituent assemblies and constitutional amendments to explore why some democracies expand rather than restrict presidential powers and why this heightened presidentialism discourages democracy. His signal theoretical contribution is his elaboration on power asymmetries. Corrales determines that conditions of reduced power asymmetry make constituent assemblies more likely to curtail presidential powers, while weaker opposition and heightened power asymmetry is an indicator that presidential powers will expand. The bargain-based theory that he uses focuses on power distribution and provides a more accurate variable in predicting actual constitutional outcomes than other approaches based on functionalism or ideology. While the empirical focus is Latin America, Fixing Democracy contributes a broadly applicable theory to the scholarship both institutions and democracy.

This book critically examines the association between the notions of crisis and migration in the context of Latin America, and from three different perspectives: first, it analyzes the discourses based on the concept of crisis employed by the media, academic researchers, civil society organizations and the state to frame human mobility issues; second, it investigates migrants’ agency under conditions of crisis; and third, it discusses whether “migration crisis” is a conjunctural or structural phenomenon in the region. Chapters in this contributed volume investigate the crisis-migration nexus in seven Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay – by discussing different human mobility phenomena, such as the migrant caravans that departed from Central America bound to Mexico and the United States; the Nicaraguan exodus caused by the political crisis in the country; the perception of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia’s media; the presence of Caribbean migrants in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Crisis and Migration: Critical Perspectives from Latin America will be of interest to a wide range of social scientists interested in migration studies, as well as to policy makers and civil society organizations. This book offers a fresh look at the way we conceive, represent, and think about the relationship between crisis and human mobility. As the volume’s contributions show, a critical examination of the notion of crisis is a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the plight of present-day migrants worldwide.