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Special Report - Venezuela: will chavismo survive? (ISSN 17414474)
Hypothesis 1: Chavismo is politically dead
Put in a nutshell, chavismo is dead because it has failed to deliver as a political movement. From this perspective we believe it is clinging on to power but has no future: it is a dead man walking. After 17 years in power – and some high points in terms of popularity – the government has come full circle and, metaphorically speaking, has brought Venezuela back down to its knees. Some of the initial ills that chavismo said it would combat – massive levels of corruption, high indicators of poverty and criminality – are now arguably much worse than when it first came to office in the late 1990s. The old political establishment has been swept aside, but despite its revolutionary claims the new and more authoritarian ruling elite has failed. This failure is political, economic, and social.
