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ABSTRACT
What happens to state bureaucracies when authoritarianism emerges? How do autocrats seek to use the administration to their ends, and how does it react? The paper analyzes Venezuela as a showcase for autocratization in Latin America. Under Chavismo-Madurismo, the general objective of the regime was to expand and co-opt all the state institutions, including public administration, to subordinate it to the “revolution” and to gain control over oil revenues. As the central aspect of the paper, we will analyse the strategies of the Chavista governments vis á vis the administration to achieve these goals. We identify three main strategies that were used to sideline the bureaucracy: repression and firing; circumventing and neglecting; and militarisation. With these strategies, Chavismo-Madurismo dismantled the former existing public administration and installed a new administration, loyal to the regime, as a part of the process of autocratization. The paper also addresses how the autocratic regime has (mis)used the public management of the Covid-pandemic to strengthen autocracy under the disguise of a state of emergency.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Parts of the following paragraphs are based on Muno and Briceño (Citation2021) and Briceño and Bautista de Alemán (Citation2019).
2. “Re-legitimation” was the name to the process of election of new authorities of the 5 public powers to adapt them to the requirements of the new Constitution. This was carried out through elections (executive and legislative at the national, state, municipal and parochial levels) and appointment by the parliament (TSJ, CNE, General Comptroller’s Office, Public Defender’s Office and General Prosecutor’s Office).
3. Named for by Deputy Luis Tascón of the government party Movimiento Quinta República -MVR-, the tascón list is a database that contains the names of all Venezuelan voters registered in the Electoral Registry, identified by political identity according to their participation or not in electoral processes, if they voted in elections and if they signed to request the realisation of the 2004 presidential recall referendum. This information was placed by the deputy on a public access website.
4. No actual data is available, but experts estimate that the number has been decreased due to the ongoing production crisis in the oil sector in Venezuela.
5. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/Venezuela-nicolas-maduro-coronavirus-arma-de-guerra-contra-China-perspectivas-buenos-aires/ [14.05.2022].
6. The quarantine was initially decreed on 15 March 2020, in 7 states of the Country, including Caracas, the Venezuelan’s capital. However, two days later, on March 17, it was extended to the entire Country.
7. https://www.efe.com/efe/america/politica/maduro-dice-que-venezuela-sufre-una-invasion-de-coronavirus-desde-colombia/20000035-4294916 [14.05.2022].
8. Decree 4,160, published in the Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria N. 6.519 from 13 March 2020.
9. https://www.elcolombiano.com/internacional/diosdado-cabello-amenaza-a-la-ciencia-con-operacion-tun-tun-por-coronavirus-en-venezuela-MC13004448 [14.05.2022].
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Wolfgang Muno
Wolfgang Muno holds the Chair for Comparative Government at the University of Rostock.
Héctor Briceño
Héctor Briceño is guest researcher at Rostock University, Germany, and researcher at the Center for Development Studies at the Central University of Venezuela(CENDES-UCV).
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