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Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Terry Lynn Karl
Terry Lynn Karl*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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The tentative reemergence of democracy in Latin America in the first half of the 1980s has encouraged scholars and policymakers to take a new look at the “older” democratic experiences on the continent in their search for viable political models. Just as Chile and Uruguay were once considered the “Switzerlands of Latin America,” so Venezuela has now become the political darling of the development set. As Peter Merkl wrote in 1981, “It appears that the only trail to a democratic future for developing societies may be the one followed by Venezuela…. Venezuela is a textbook case of step-by-step progress.” Praxis, however, has produced a certain wariness toward “textbook cases” of this sort. The demise of past democratic regimes whose stability had been unquestioned for decades warns that the search for models is fraught with perils. Despite its having an established party system, Venezuela should not be expected to provide a formula for those who seek paths to democratization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 63 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

The author wishes to thank Philippe C. Schmitter, David Collier, and three anonymous LARR reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The Center for International Affairs at Harvard University provided institutional support for another version that will appear in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, edited by Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

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