Venezuela is not a democracy. And won't be one

Introduction

Despite a myriad of long-standing and systematic facts demonstrating that Venezuela abandoned the democratic track decades ago, some people continue to demand results as if it were a democracy. Nevertheless, the facts show that, at least in this century, Venezuela's regime functioning and fundamentals are those of a far-left autocracy. In the past, such a realistic approach would have allowed down-to-earth views on its recent and future evolution.

Venezuela’s political history over the past century has been anything but stable. Firstly, from 1899 to 2002, the country experienced nine coups, six of which occurred in the second half of the century, and the last one, in 2002, attempted to remove the recently elected president, then dictator, Hugo Chávez. Secondly, from 1900 to 2024, Venezuelans lived 69 out of 124 years (56%) under dictatorship, only overtaken by Cuba with the same one-party system since 1959. In sum, just four men (Gnal. Cipriano Castro, Juan Vicente Gómez, Hugo Chávez, and Nicolas Maduro) have governed for 61 years (Quintero Montiel, 2018). Finally, unlike most of its neighbours that left behind a long-standing autocratic past in the 80s and entered the “Third Wave of democratisation” (Huntington, 1993), Venezuelans just enjoyed a decade of effective liberal democracy to immediately engage in the early 00s in their most damaging political experiment of Chavismo—or Socialismo del siglo XXI.

Despite this adverse background and the consolidation of a socialist-inspired government over the last 25 years, many people unrealistically expected that the 2024 presidential election would remove the second Latin American communist regime via the ballot box. In the end, the results demonstrated that such “bourgeois nonsense” is strange for the Marxist view of Venezuela’s political rulers.

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Concepts

Electoral autocracy: Political regime that keeps de-facto multiparty elections to elect governments but falls short of essential democratic standards (Lührmann et al., 2018)

Autocratic legalism: Systematic use of the Judicial system to legitimise autocratic governments (Corrales, 2023)

Bourgeois State: Class domination and exploitation instrument (Bottomore et al., 1991)

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Venezuela’s actual regime

In global democracy indices, Venezuela’s regime has been continuously classified as authoritarian or autocratic throughout this century. For instance, V-Dem Institute (2025) considers in its history of world regimes that the Latin American country abandoned its democratic track in 2001 when it entered the “grey zone” to degrade as an “Electoral autocracy finally”. This type of regime, according to Lührmann et al. (2018), despite holding de-facto multiparty elections to elect governments, falls short of essential democratic standards, mainly in terms of actual competitiveness and institutional requisites (Schumpeter, 2008; Dahl, 1971).

V-Dem Intitute’s History of the Regimes of the World, 1974-2024

Source: (V-Dem Institute, 2025, p.52)

In fact, in 1998, Hugo Chávez took advantage of Venezuela's “electoral democracy” and, once in power, pushed for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution (1999) that would transform the former democratic architecture and ratify the new government in a general election. Ever since, Venezuelans have headed to the ballot box six times to legitimise a 25-year autocracy led by two men, among a farce of multiparty competition.

The last episode of this democratic facade was unveiled in July 2024. After putting aside opposition candidates by obscure judicial means, such as Maria Corina Machado, violating fundamental civil liberties, breaching the Barbados Agreement with Joe Biden’s administration on free and fair elections, and manipulating the electoral system—results and institutions alike (The Carter Center, 2024), Nicolás Maduro was re-elected for a consecutive third term that would end in 2030, resuming a 17-year presidency.

In addition to breaking the basics of procedural democracy, the Venezuelan regime falls short of core constitutional liberalism. Effective separation of power, checks and balances between institutions, protection of fundamental liberties, and rule of law as constraints on governments are among those values that Chavismo has substituted, whether through constitutional reforms (1999, 2009), attempts of direct democracy via referendums (2007), executive orders known locally as “Leyes socialistas” (López Maya, 2023), or de facto. As a result, the Venezuelan regime performs critically in the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), reaching the 168th position among 179 countries worldwide (V-Dem Institute, 2025, p.63). Such a phenomenon is ratified from another perspective by the Rule of Law Index, in which Venezuela is 142nd out of 142 countries (World Justice Project, 2024).

In the Democracy Index, for example, since 2006, Venezuela has never moved out of the authoritarian zone, whether as a “hybrid” (6.0-4.0) or “authoritarian regime” (4.0-0.0) (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006-2025). In the 2024 measurement, the country reached one of its lowest-ever overall scores (2.3/10.0), placing it in the fourth quartile along with the 41 worst world regimes. Four out of five of the Democracy Index’s categories plunge into the authoritarian area, in which the “Electoral process and pluralism” since 2019 has stuck at zero grade—the same score of countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia with dynastic monarchies (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2025, p.80).

Venezuela’s regime measures in the Democracy Index, 2006-2024

Source: Data from (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2025)

Overall, pessimism about Venezuela’s future grows higher as its “political culture” does not show any signal of consistent democratization. As every electoral process continues to increase national division and frustration, parties and supporters less and less accept election results, calling for massive demonstrations that usually end up in brutal repression by authorities (Redacción BBC Mundo, 2024). Moreover, public opinion shows contradictory trends. While Venezuelans seem to prefer democracy over other regimes, their acceptance of an authoritarian government increased from 2023 to 2024—probably as a consequence of this vicious cycle of frustration with their progressively more close authoritarian regime (Corporación Latinobarómetro, 2024).

Venezuelan authoritarianism’s content

As a déjà vu, when Hugo Chávez announced at the Fifth World Social Forum 2005 a socialist turn for Venezuela, he reminded Fidel Castro in 1961, airing publicly that the Cuban Revolution would follow the socialist way (Zanetti, 2013). Since then, the Cuban regime has become inspirational for Latin American far-left movements—from Colombian guerrillas in the early 60s to contemporary Socialismo del siglo XXI leaders.   

Even though the 1999 Constitution spread nationwide acceptance for its expansion of direct democracy, Chavez focused on reforming it after his public commitment to socialism in 2005. Despite the people's rejection of Chávez’s proposals in the 2007 referendum, he ignored the popular will. Finally, he imposed them through executive orders (“Leyes socialistas”), which progressively structured a socialist regime(López Maya, 2023): unification of the Venezuelan left in one party controlled by the government, as well as the social system, a state economy driven, State-controlled media, and the undermining of multiparty system, separation of powers and checks and balances between institutions—most of them under direct control of the executive through ordinary cronyism and corruption or sophisticated autocratic legalism.

According to Javier Corrales (2023), Venezuela’s democratic backsliding was driven by the law’s use, abuse, and disuse. The nation’s Supreme Court has been the preferred tool for concealing abuses. Rather than protecting the constitution through judicial review, the Court has adopted twisted interpretations to destroy the liberal-democratic foundations while substituting them with a socialist de-facto content. As a case in point, the 2024 elections, in which the National Electoral Authority and the Supreme Court legitimised the most rampant manipulation in Latin American electoral history. As a result, Nicolas Maduro’s third term was formally safeguarded by a judicial system dependent on the executive (Quesada et al., 2025).

This is precisely what López Maya (López Maya, 2023) has described as the “elimination of Venezuelan liberal democracy’s last vestige”. However, if, from the democratic perspective, this phenomenon must be seen as a “backsliding”, from the socialist chavismo, this might represent the actual realisation of the Marxist political project.

Even though Marx “never attempted a systematic analysis of the state”—apart from stating its function as a class domination and exploitation instrument and its core role after the revolution—later Marxists (e.g. Lenin) contributed to developing the orthodoxy. First, with “the virtual obliteration of the distinction between ‘bourgeois democracy’ and other forms of capitalist rule (for instance fascism)”, which labels both types of state indistinctively as ‘military convict prisons for the workers’. Second, reiterating a key Marxian axiom in which the bourgeois state might not be reformed but ‘smashed’. This radical notion not only combated inner revisionism[1] but also legitimised the idea of replacing the smashed bourgeois state and democracy with the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Bottomore et al., 1991, pp. 520-24).

In recent history, such ideas have produced Latin America's three longest-lasting authoritarian regimes: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. For instance, V-Dem (2025, p.52) categorised Cuba as a ‘Closed autocracy’ consecutively from 1974; Nicaragua is classified as an ‘Electoral autocracy’ since Daniel Ortega took power in 2007; and Venezuela entered the autocratic zone in 2002. Furthermore, The Economist’s Democracy Indices (2006-2025) reveal a more critical phenomenon of these authoritarian regimes during this century—their common general trend is deterioration. While their socialist systems seem to strengthen, democratic foundations sink to the deep-bottom levels. As a result, Cuba’s, Nicaragua’s, and Venezuela’s political evolution tend to worsen progressively in the future.

Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in the Democracy Index – Overall scores, 2006-2024

Source: Data from (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2025)

Overall, Cuba’s 66-year autocracy, Daniel Ortega’s 18-year presidency in Nicaragua, and Venezuela's 25-year chavismo regime have been guaranteed by a successful combination of putting theory into practice and learning from experience. In this case, Cuba has played a key role for its regional partners. First of all, given the immense authority which ‘El Che’ Guevara’s pronouncements came to enjoy in the Latin American Marxist world due to the Cuban Revolution, his view on democratic elections may well have contributed to an early far-left disdain for basic procedural democracy[2] (Guevara, 1961).

A few years later, Fidel Castro reiterated the same notion in 1990 after Daniel Ortega lost the presidency in Nicaragua’s last free and fair elections. It is said that the Cuban leader called Ortega after the defeat, “berating him for fooling around with 'bourgeois nonsense' like elections” (Ruiz, 2025). Unsurprisingly, Nicolas Maduro—the last Cuban protégé—won the 2024 presidential election, smashing “Venezuelan liberal democracy’s last vestige”: the people’s will.    

Venezuela’s outlook

In conclusion, Venezuelan authoritarianism’s content might determine its future, as Latin American political experience has shown. First, since 1959, only one socialist regime has been removed via the ballot box: Nicaraguan Sandinism in 1990. Such a feat was more a mistake of Ortega’s overconfidence than a democratic output.  Second, data demonstrates that as this type of regime strengthens by smashing essential democratic standards, U-turns become hardly probable. Third, paradoxically, Latin Americans have more experience in removing far-right than far-left dictatorships through democratic ways (O’Donnell et al., 1986). Finally, as history has shown, ‘Maximum pressure’ strategies have neither weakened the regime nor revitalised democracy.

At least in the short term, as Chavismo keeps expanding its power over the whole state and society, it is hard to say that no breakthrough seems to be in sight. Nevertheless, a down-to-earth perspective on the regime would allow more realistic expectations and effective policies to protect a democracy that withers away.        

References

Bottomore, T., Harris, L., Kiernan, V. G., & Miliband, R. (1991). The marxist thought. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Corporación Latinobarómetro. (2024). Informe Latinobarómetro 2024. https://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp

Corrales, J. (2023). Autocracy rising: How Venezuela transitioned to authoritarianism. Brookings Institution Press.

Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press.

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2025). Democracy Index 2024.

Guevara, E. (1961, April 9). Cuba: ¿Excepción histórica o vanguardia en la lucha anticolonialista?https://www.marxists.org/espanol/guevara/escritos/op/libros/presente/09.htm

Huntington, S. (1993). Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series, 4, 12.

López Maya, M. (2023). Autoritarismo, izquierdas y democracia participativa en Venezuela. Nueva Sociedad. https://www.nuso.org/articulo/304-autoritarismo-izquierdas-democracia-participativa-venezuela/

Lührmann, A., Tannenberg, M., & Lindberg, S. I. (2018). Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes. Politics and Governance, 6(1), 60–77. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214

O’Donnell, G., Schmitter, P. C., & Whitehead, L. (1986). Transitions from authoritarian rule: Comparative perspectives (Vol. 3). JHU Press.

Quesada, J. D., Singer, F., & Moleiro, A. (2025, January 10). Maduro se proclama presidente de Venezuela sin mostrar las actas electorales. El País América. https://elpais.com/america/2025-01-10/maduro-se-proclama-presidente-de-venezuela-sin-mostrar-las-pruebas-de-su-triunfo.html

Quintero Montiel, I. (2018). El siglo XX: Conquista, construcción y defensa de la democracia. In E. Pino Iturrieta (Ed.), Historia mínima de Venezuela (Ebook). Colegio de México.

Redacción BBC Mundo. (2024, July 29). Elecciones en Venezuela: la oposición rechaza la victoria de Maduro anunciada por el CNE - BBC News Mundo. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cv2gwyg11z1o

Ruiz, D. (2025, April 1). The Stunning Loss Daniel Ortega Never Forgot. Https://Www.Americasquarterly.Org/Article/the-Stunning-Loss-Daniel-Ortega-Never-Forgot/.

Schumpeter, J. A. (2008). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Ebook). Harper Perennial Modern Thought.

The Carter Center. (2024, June). Observation of the 2024 Presidential Election in Venezuela. Https://Www.Cartercenter.Org/Resources/Pdfs/News/Peace_publications/Election_reports/Venezuela/Venezuela-Final-Report-2025.Pdf.

V-Dem Institute. (2025). Democracy Report 2025: 25 Years of Autocratization – Democracy Trumped?https://www.v-dem.net/documents/60/V-dem-dr__2025_lowres.pdf

World Justice Project. (2024). The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2024. https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPIndex2024.pdf

Zanetti, O. (2013). Historia mínima de Cuba. El Colegio de Mexico AC.

Footnotes 

[1]  Lenin determined that the Second International (1889-1916) and other Marxist movements, such as the Russian Mensheviks, represented ‘revisionism’ of the original Marx and Engels’ theory. In his pamphlet ‘State and Revolution’ (1917), he intended to restate the Marxian tradition of the state, which Marx had established in the 18th Brumaire (1852). (Bottomore et al., 1991).

[2]  The Cuban Revolution leader claimed in 1961 that “It would be an unforgivable mistake to underestimate the benefits that the revolutionary program can obtain from a given electoral process; in the same way that it would be unforgivable to limit oneself to electoral issues and not see the other means of struggle, including armed struggle, to obtain power”.