Venezuela and Democratic Erosion

When people imagine a democracy turning authoritarian, they often picture a military coup or a leader suddenly canceling elections. Venezuela shows that democratic decline can happen much more slowly. Elections, courts, legislatures, and a constitution may continue to exist even while their ability to limit those in power becomes weaker. The more important question, then, is not simply whether elections still happen, but whether voters can meaningfully choose among alternatives, verify the results, and give real governing power to the winners. Venezuela’s democratic erosion occurred largely because those conditions were gradually weakened while formal democratic institutions remained in place.

This pattern fits Anna Lührmann and Staffan Lindberg’s course reading, “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New About It?” They argue that contemporary autocratization often develops through gradual setbacks carried out under a legal appearance rather than through one sudden collapse. Javier Corrales makes a similar argument about Venezuela in “The Authoritarian Resurgence: Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela.” He calls this autocratic legalism, meaning the use, abuse, or selective application of laws to weaken political opponents and institutions while maintaining the appearance of legality.

Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 after years of economic problems and public frustration with Venezuela’s traditional political parties. He promised major political and social change, and a new constitution was approved by voters in 1999. It would therefore be too simple to say that Venezuela became authoritarian the moment Chávez entered office. He retained significant popular support, survived a failed coup attempt in 2002, and won a presidential recall referendum in 2004. Human Rights Watch’s account of this period shows that international observers recognized the 2004 referendum while Venezuela remained deeply politically polarized. These events show that Venezuela’s democratic decline developed within a broader political conflict rather than through one single break with democracy.

As discussed in Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases, democracy requires more than elections. Institutions must also distribute power and provide effective checks on the executive. Courts and legislatures matter because they can prevent political power from becoming concentrated in one part of government.

The Supreme Court became one of the clearest examples of how those checks weakened. In 2004, a new law expanded the court from 20 to 32 justices. Chávez’s governing coalition then filled the newly created seats with allies. Human Rights Watch argued that this change seriously weakened judicial independence. The court itself was not abolished; it continued to operate as a formal institution. The problem was that its ability to act independently from the government became much more questionable.

This development also connects to Ozan Varol’s idea of “stealth authoritarianism.” Varol explains that governments can use legal mechanisms that also exist in democracies, such as courts and election laws, in ways that weaken political competition while still appearing lawful. Venezuela illustrates this problem because institutional changes did not eliminate the Supreme Court. Instead, they changed how effectively the court could check executive power.

The 2015 National Assembly election shows why that mattered. The opposition won 112 of 167 seats, enough for a two-thirds majority. Human Rights Watch documented the result and the outgoing Assembly’s plan to fill Supreme Court vacancies before the newly elected legislators took office. In a system with strong checks and balances, this result should have given the opposition substantial power to challenge the president and shape national policy.

Instead, the outgoing pro-government Assembly moved to appoint new Supreme Court justices before the new legislators entered office. The court later issued decisions that limited the authority of the opposition-controlled legislature. The opposition had won the election, but its ability to use the power voters had given it was sharply reduced. This shows an important gap between winning votes and being able to convert those votes into governing authority.

This fits Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg’s concept of “constitutional retrogression.” In simple terms, constitutional retrogression is a gradual weakening of competitive elections, political rights, and the rule of law rather than an immediate collapse of the constitutional system. Venezuela increasingly followed this pattern: elections continued, but electoral victories became less capable of producing meaningful changes in political power.

The quality of presidential elections also became more controversial over time. Nicolás Maduro narrowly won the 2013 presidential election after Chávez’s death, while the opposition alleged irregularities. In 2018, the mainstream opposition boycotted the presidential election, arguing that the conditions were unfair. Reuters’ timeline of Venezuela’s elections describes how these disputes developed over time.

The 2024 presidential election raised even stronger concerns. María Corina Machado, who had overwhelmingly won the opposition primary, was barred from holding public office, so Edmundo González eventually became the main opposition candidate. After the vote, Venezuela’s electoral authority declared Maduro the winner but did not release complete polling-station-level results. The Carter Center stated that it could not verify or corroborate the announced result and concluded that the election did not meet international standards of electoral integrity.

The important point is that simply holding an election does not automatically make a political system democratic. Meaningful elections require genuine competition, participation by opposition candidates, transparent vote counting, and institutions that allow electoral winners to exercise authority.

The weakening of legislative power became even more visible in 2017, when Maduro’s government created a National Constituent Assembly. Officially, it was established to rewrite the constitution, but it received broad powers and assumed legislative functions from the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Human Rights Watch reported that the Constituent Assembly was made up entirely of government supporters and assumed legislative powers soon after it began operating.

The elected National Assembly still existed, but another institution increasingly performed its functions. This is a concrete example of how an elected institution can survive formally while losing much of the authority that makes elections politically meaningful.

International democracy measurements reflect this longer institutional decline. International IDEA’s Democracy Tracker for Venezuela places the country in the low-performance category across all four major areas of its democracy framework—Representation, Rights, Rule of Law, and Participation—and reports that Venezuela is in the bottom 25 percent of countries for most indicators. This supports the broader argument that Venezuela’s democratic problems cannot be understood only by asking whether elections formally existed.

A major change occurred on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and transported them to the United States. Reuters has since reported that the two remain in U.S. custody while facing criminal charges. Venezuela is now led by interim president Delcy Rodríguez. Reuters reported in September 2026 that Rodríguez promised future elections as part of a political transition but did not announce a date, while also saying that talks with opposition sectors were underway.

Because the political situation remains unsettled, this article focuses mainly on the process of democratic erosion and authoritarian consolidation before Maduro’s removal in January 2026. His removal alone does not determine what kind of political system Venezuela will develop next.

For me, the central lesson from Venezuela is that democracy can weaken even when its most visible institutions remain. A country does not have to abolish its constitution or cancel every election before democratic government becomes less meaningful. Courts can lose independence, legislatures can lose real authority, opposition candidates can face restrictions, and election results can become difficult to verify.

Venezuela therefore supports the broader argument in the course readings that modern autocratization can happen through institutions rather than outside them. The decisive issue is not simply whether elections are held. It is whether citizens can choose among real alternatives, whether results can be verified, and whether winners can actually exercise the authority voters gave them. Venezuela shows how democracy can remain visible on paper while becoming much weaker in practice.