Reevaluating the Chávez Regime: Participatory Democracy or Rentier Populism?

Abstract

This analysis evaluates the Chávez regime by its own standard for democracy and citizenship, what it referred to as protagonistic, participatory democracy. Rather than committing itself to the realisation of this project, and the expanded notion of citizenship that it entailed, the Chávez regime employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, it failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Twenty‐first Century Socialism. Accordingly, this analysis demonstrates how the concentration of top‐down, executive power characteristic of rentier populism impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy.