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What lessons can we draw from
Venezuela’s experience with polarization,
and what can be done to overcome it?
Dening Pernicious Polarization
Differences of identities, interests, and
attitudes are an inherent part of democracy
to be managed, not eliminated. Pernicious
polarization occurs when a normal
multiplicity of interests and identities in
a society begins to align along a single
dimension, splitting into two opposing
camps (McCoy and Rahman 2016). It is
not so much the hardening of opinion on a
single issue but rather the reorganization of
opinions on different issues along specic
identity markers that makes polarization
such a difcult problem to solve (Baldassari
and Bearman, 2007).
At the extreme, each camp comes to
perceive the other in such negative terms
that a normal political adversary with
whom to engage in a competition for
power is transformed into an enemy
posing an existential threat to be
vanquished (Mallén and García-Guadilla,
forthcoming). Categorization extends to
all aspects of life, not just political, and
peaceful coexistence is no longer perceived
by citizens as possible (Lozada 2014;
McCoy and Diez 2011).
Pernicious polarization may arise from
a variety of factors and with different
underlying cleavages, but its manifestation
and consequences have striking similarities.
Highly polarized societies pose threats to
governability, peaceful coexistence, and
prosperity. Pernicious polarization creates
problems of governance as communication
breaks down and the two camps prove
unwilling and unable to negotiate and
compromise. Political gridlock paralyzes
government and in some cases results
in instability if neither side can prevail
president in the United States (McCoy
2016a).
Underlying the growing divisions within
societies is a cleavage of globalists vs.
nationalists responding to larger structural
changes across the world. Globalization,
automation, information technologies,
and the diffusion of global power have all
combined to produce reactions of fear and
resentment by electorates who have felt left
out, left behind, and voiceless.
Venezuelan political elites failed to
manage the globalization of the country’s
commodity-dependent economy, and it
suffered a nancial and economic crisis
in the 1990s as traumatic as the 2008
Great Recession was for the United States
and Europe. Oil prices slid and poverty
rates nearly tripled from 25 percent to 65
percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Segments
of the population that felt “invisible”
and unrepresented reacted by rejecting
wholesale the traditional parties and
electing in 1998 the outsider candidate
with the most radical call for change, Hugo
Chávez. Like Donald Trump 18 years later
in the United States, Chávez rode a wave of
disgust with the “corrupt” and inept elites
to coast to victory on a platform of vague
promises of national renewal, a cleaner
and purer democracy, and the recapture
and redistribution of the nation’s resource
wealth from foreign inuence and local
elites.
Nearly two decades later, Venezuela is on
the edge of ruin, its populace still divided
but the two polarized camps now more
fragmented. International actors have
been trying again, for the third time in
two decades, to bridge the divide and help
the country agree on a set of ground rules
and a minimum agenda to prevent it from
sinking further into the abyss of misery or
erupting in violence.
Visiting Caracas the week of November
14, 2016, I heard much talk of the need for
regime transition and what it would take
to accomplish it. Public authorities had just
crossed a line in the sand of democratic
principles when they suspended indenitely
the presidential recall referendum and
postponed till 2017 the gubernatorial
elections scheduled for December. This
curtailment of the right to vote was
followed closely by President Nicolas
Maduro’s emergency visit to the Vatican
to renew a call for Vatican mediation of
a dialogue with the political opposition,
which began October 30.
It was widely presumed that the president
wished to delay a vote on terminating
his mandate early because of the high
likelihood he would lose such a vote.
What is not widely discussed is why
the government has such fear of losing
power, which should be a normal event
in a functioning democracy. Nor why the
imploding economy and unconstitutional
moves did not produce a stronger reaction
inside or outside of Venezuela. The logic of
polarization helps to explain these puzzles.
Polarization Is a Global Phenomenon
In many ways, the Venezuelan experience
of the last two decades presages the
polarization apparently sweeping
electorates in Europe and the United States
today, and provides important warning
signs. Hugo Chávez and his polarizing
populist style have been credited with
initiating a wave of leftist populism in
Latin America and have been compared
with the right-wing, nationalist populism
emerging in Europe in the twenty-rst
century (Taggart and Rovira Kaltvasser
2015). More recently, the political styles
and strategies of Chávez have been
compared with Donald Trump’s rise to
DEBATES: VENEZUELA
Lessons from Venezuela’s Pernicious
Polarization
by JenniFeR Mccoy | Georgia State University | jmccoy@gsu.edu
53
how resources should be redistributed to
address social exclusion and inequality, and
what constitutes legitimate and effective
political participation and representation.
The ultimate goal of preventing violence
was achieved, but the underlying issues
producing polarization and new forms of
political exclusion were not resolved.
International mediation 2014–2015
Ten years later, Chávez had consolidated
partisan control of most institutions in
the country but continued to personally
dominate decision making. After his death
in 2013, the latent polarization reemerged
following the close election of Maduro
in April 2013 and erupted in large street
protests in early 2014. In 2002–2003
the opposition had pursued a two-prong
strategy of street pressure and negotiations,
followed by an electoral strategy when
the former failed to dislodge Chávez from
power. In 2014, the political opposition
divided over a shorter-term strategy of
protests to force Maduro to resign (“La
Salida”), and a longer-term strategy of
building on the electoral strength exhibited
in 2013.
A new regional organization, the South
American Union (UNASUR), was called in
by the government to facilitate a dialogue
in May 2014, while the opposition
unsuccessfully sought to add the Vatican
to the team (the government agreed on the
Vatican but the Pope was reluctant to get
involved at that time). UNASUR did not
have a bureaucracy to provide a permanent
presence or technical expertise to the three
foreign ministers tasked with mediating the
crisis in short-term visits to the country,
and the dialogue eventually sputtered out
along with the street protests.
as other countries embarking on a similar
path of pernicious polarization.
Mitigating Pernicious Polarization
In Venezuela, the divisions between
Chavistas and anti-Chavistas became so
intense that outsiders were called in three
times to try to bridge the divide.
International mediation 2002–2004
Following the short-lived coup against
Chávez in April 2002, the government
and the multisectoral opposition
Coordinadora Democrática invited the
Organization of American States, the
United Nations Development Program,
and the nongovernmental organization
Carter Center to facilitate a dialogue to
restore governability. After seven months
of negotiations carried out alongside
street protests and a nationwide strike, the
government and the opposition signed an
agreement in May 2003 that envisioned
an electoral solution to the political
crisis in the form of a presidential recall
referendum. Chávez won the referendum in
a lopsided vote of 59 percent to 41 percent.
At the end of the more-than-two-year
intervention, Venezuelans had managed to
avoid the widespread bloodshed that many
thought likely in July 2002 and largely
resolved the question of the legitimacy
of President Chávez’s mandate through
the defeat of a recall initiative to shorten
his term in ofce. Even so, the society
remained polarized; a large number of
citizens questioned the validity of the
recall vote; and the underlying elements
of the dispute remained unresolved,
such as conict over whether and how
to guarantee a separation of powers and
independent political institutions, the role
of the state in the economy, whether and
in the long run. Alternatively, one camp
may become hegemonic and tend toward
authoritarianism. At the societal level,
citizens become divided spatially and
socially. They come to believe they can no
longer coexist in the same nation.
Polarization is often elite-driven,
particularly in electoral democracies.
Polarizing rhetoric can be an effective
electoral strategy when political leaders
intentionally strive to divide the electorate,
building on existing cleavages or even
creating new ones. Chávez used a
populist discourse with Manichean moral
dimensions, promising to represent the
interests of the “good people” against
the conniving “evil elites.” Over time, he
included a nationalist dimension as he
promised to restore the glory of the nation
against the foreign threats represented by
the “empire” of the United States.
Today, in North America and Europe,
a globalist/nationalist divide is evident
in the discourse of leaders promising to
protect the interests of citizens “left out”
or “left behind” by globalist threats such
as job-sucking trade deals, job-threatening
or terrorist-threatening immigrants and
refugees, or threats to traditional culture
and religion in countries ranging from
the United States to the United Kingdom,
France, Hungary, and Turkey.
Once a polarizing electoral logic is in
place and the population is divided
psychologically, spatially, and materially,
how can the perceptions of the other
camp be changed from one of an enemy
to be vanquished to that of an adversary
to compete against and at times negotiate
with to achieve the collective interest? This
is the dilemma facing Venezuela today, and
lessons from its experience may inform
the current situation in Venezuela as well
lasaforum winter 2017 : volume xlviii : issue 1
54
to be seen as a zero-sum game. If I lose
power, I face loss of my benets and
possible retribution. If I gain power, I face
opportunities for reward but also the risk
that the losers will destabilize the country
to impede governability. Incentives to
change the logic to a positive-sum game are
needed. Venezuelans already agree on the
constitution as a framework to guarantee
rights and duties. What they need now are
independent institutions that can protect
these rights.
Credibility is also needed. Currently,
neither side trusts the other to comply
with any commitments they may agree
to. Chavistas fear a rollback of the
redistributive gains from the Chavista
governments, persecution, and witch
hunts as happened during the 2002 coup,
and perhaps the disappearance of a fair
chance to compete again for power in a
regular time period. The opposition may
fear that they will not be able to govern
if they do reach power, lacking control of
institutions and arms and possibly facing a
scenario such as that in Nicaragua in 1990,
when the Sandinistas vowed to “govern
from below” and disrupted the Chamorro
government with strikes and protests.
The Colombian peace process provides
examples of two possible remedies to these
dilemmas. First, public distrust of the FARC
to actually comply with the commitment
to give up arms and violence was abated
with small steps and joint actions with
the government before the agreement was
even nalized: a unilateral cease-re, a
joint demining effort, the return of child
soldiers. Second, the negotiators agreed
on mechanisms of transitional justice to
facilitate the transition of an armed actor to
a peaceful political party, including reduced
sentences in exchange for acknowledging
responsibility and telling the truth about
In 2002, some of the same substantive
issues were present as exist today: lack of
separation of powers, reliance on decree
laws bypassing the legislature, insecurity
and a highly armed citizenry, and calls
for a truth commission. But the focus of
the two sides in that early conict was
on control of the executive. The 2003
negotiated agreement included (unfullled)
commitments to disarm citizens and
establish a truth commission but focused
on carrying out the constitutional
provision for a recall referendum process.
The referendum vote conrmed Chávez’s
legitimacy to remain in power and was
rejected by a signicant portion of the
opposition; no new rules of the game
or independent institutions were agreed
upon before or after the election; and the
polarization deepened.
In the current context, constitutional rights,
including voting rights and no arbitrary
detention, should be nonnegotiable.
However, negotiating a route to depoliticize
institutions is needed to provide greater
guarantees to protect the rights of both
sides should they lose power. Furthermore,
negotiating a path to resolve the urgent
humanitarian crisis is an obligation of all
political leaders to the populace. These
negotiations should accompany either
the right to exercise a referendum on an
ineffective government or a negotiated joint
transitional government. But the opposition
should resist committing the same mistakes
as in 2004, when they relied entirely on an
election solution but then failed to accept
the results, abstained from elections in
2005, and abdicated any political role.
Incentives are essential to induce change in
elite polarizing logics.
In deeply polarized societies, where
each side sees the other as an existential
threat to their way of life, politics comes
International mediation 2016
A deepening social and economic crisis
fueled by food, medicine, and currency
shortages, accompanied by a strong
opposition push for a recall referendum
to cut short Maduro’s presidential push
in 2016, led to the third international
mediation attempt. The National Electoral
Council postponed the gubernatorial
elections expected in December 2016 and
suspended the recall referendum process
in October 2016. Immediately following
these actions, President Maduro reinitiated
attempts to involve the Vatican, and
this time the Pope agreed, joining forces
with UNASUR to initiate a new dialogue
in November 2016. One month later,
that dialogue was suspended when the
opposition accused the government of
failing to match the initial concessions the
opposition had made.
Lessons from Past Efforts, Steps toward the
Future
An exclusive focus on an electoral solution
is insufcient.
In polarized contexts, the incumbent is
motivated to stay in power at all costs,
and opponents are united largely by their
desire to remove the incumbent leader or
party from power. Though elections or
recall referenda are the legitimate means
to accomplish these goals, an exclusive
focus on this strategy and endgame, as
happened in the 2002–2004 conict,
will not establish the foundations
needed for a society to move forward.
These foundations include depoliticized
institutions, compliance with an agreed-on
set of rules of the game, and solving critical
policy issues such as jump-starting the
economy or resolving humanitarian crisis.
55
across the boundary line and the creation
of new coalitions.
Overcoming the perceptions of mutually
exclusive identities and interests requires
a longer-term effort of at least three to
ve years to help a society build bridges
and nd shared values once again.
Social psychologists emphasize the role
of empathy, the ability to put oneself in
another’s shoes and understand their needs
and fears. Exercises such as community
work projects can provide a nonthreatening
space to bring people together and begin
to recognize their shared humanity again,
identifying common interests such as safe
spaces for children to play in or clean water
for neighborhoods. Eventually a shared
national identity may be rekindled.
Another mechanism for overcoming
polarization is a scenarios exercise,
which extends time horizons to envision
alternative futures for the society 15 to
20 years in the future (Kahane 2012).
By bringing together diverse perspectives
to consider the ramications of specic
policies, political strategies, and
communication styles, participants will
gain a greater shared understanding of the
implications of failure to change course.
Finally, another lesson from political
psychology involves “motivated reasoning”
or “bias conrmation” in which new
information that disconrms one’s prior
beliefs is simply discarded by an individual
(Westen et al. 2006). In polarized contexts,
the tendency to accept information that
reinforces one’s prior perceptions is
compounded by the “echo chambers”
of sharing like-minded stories and even
conspiracies through social media, reliance
on single news sources, unwillingness to
fact-check sources, and the fake news
now created for revenue generation by
social media entrepreneurs in foreign
to support an ongoing mediation effort
(Legler and McCoy 2016). In addition,
throughout the three crises, the limits of
international inuence and leverage were
apparent due to Venezuela’s signicant
foreign revenues from petroleum, its own
use of petro-diplomacy and aid, and the
resulting competing foreign policy interests
of regional governments.
By 2016, the OAS had decided to back
UNASUR’s renewed mediation effort,
and hemispheric governments supported
the entry of the Vatican, providing more
of a united front (McCoy 2016b). The
international community will be most
effective in helping Venezuela resolve its
crises, however, if they carry through on
commitments to condemn violations of the
Democratic Charter, such as the October
2016 suspension of the recall process and
the 2016 gubernatorial elections, while also
facilitating dialogue efforts conditional on
results.
Bridging divides, generating empathy,
and expanding time horizons for social
reconciliation
Polarization indicates two camps formed
across an impermeable boundary, with
mutually exclusive identities and interests.
Breaking down those camps to create
cross-cutting ties is crucial to reducing
polarization. In addition, although
negotiations are facilitated by two coherent
camps with a single voice, such as the
context in 2002 when Chávez personalized
power and the Coordinadora Democrática
created a more coherent voice for a
multifaceted opposition coalition, there is
a trade-off. Today, both the government
and the opposition are more fragmented,
making negotiations less efcient. On the
other hand, the fragmentation may create
more space and exibility for dialogue
human rights violations, paying reparations
to victims, and guarantees of nonrepetition.
International mediation efforts are
stronger when unied, but still insufcient
on their own.
The international community can also
contribute incentives and disincentives.
Following Robert Dahl’s recipe
for democratization, international
condemnation of violations of human
rights or democratic principles can raise the
costs of repression. Providing good ofces
to facilitate dialogue can lower the costs of
tolerance by providing legitimacy to both
sides about their peaceful and democratic
bona des, as long as the facilitators do
not allow the negotiations to be used by
either side to buy time, make unreasonable
demands, or avoid complying with
constitutional rights.
The international community has been
unwilling to condemn abusive government
actions in Venezuela, limiting itself to
condemning the 2002 coup attempt
against the incumbent, President Chávez.
It has been more willing to provide
mediation. The Western Hemisphere’s
collective defense-of-democracy regime
was strongest in the rst mediation
attempt when regional organizations
coincided on the principles in the 2001
Inter-American Democratic Charter, signed
unanimously by all countries but Cuba.
By 2014, the hemisphere had become
polarized and the growing number of
regional organizations did not agree on
the very concept of democracy, nor did
they agree on hemispheric obligations to
defend against government violations.
UNASUR replaced the Organization of
American States (OAS) as the mediator
but had neither a protocol for democracy
protection beyond defending incumbents
in ofce, nor the bureaucratic structure
lasaforum winter 2017 : volume xlviii : issue 1
56
McCoy, Jennifer, and Tahmina Rahman
2016 “Polarized Democracies in Comparative
Perspective: Toward a Conceptual
Framework.” Presented at the International
Political Science Association Conference,
Poznan, Poland. July 26.
Taggart, Paul, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser
2015 “Dealing with Populists in
Government: Some Comparative
Conclusions.” Democratization. DOI:
10.1080/13510347.2015.1076230 (published
online October 5, 2015).
Westen, D., P. S. Blagov, K. Harenski, C. Kilts,
and S. Hamann
2006 “Neural Bases of Motivated Reasoning:
An FMRI Study of Emotional Constraints on
Partisan Political Judgment in the 2004 U.S.
Presidential Election.” Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience 18 (11): 1947–1958.
countries. Counteracting these tendencies
will require long-term efforts to teach
logics of inquiry and scientic methods in
education systems, breaking up monopolies
of information, and supporting news media
professionals.
References
Baldassari, Delia, and Peter Bearman
2007 “Dynamics of Political Polarization.”
American Sociological Review 72 (5):
784–811.
Kahane, Adam
2012 Transformative Scenario Planning. San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Legler, Thomas, and Jennifer McCoy
2016 “Games People Play: International
Regime and Domestic Actor Complexity in
Venezuela’s Political Crises.” Paper presented
at the International Studies Association
Conference, Atlanta, March.
Lozada, Mireya
2014 “Us or Them?: Social Representation and
Imaginaries of the Other in Venezuela.” Papers
on Social Representations 23: 21.1–21.16.
Mallén, Ana, and María García-Guadilla
forthcoming Venezuela’s Polarized Politics: The
Paradox of Direct Democracy under Chávez.
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
McCoy, Jennifer
2016a “What Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump
Have in Common.” Reuters, March 31.
2016b “Can Outsiders Help Venezuela in the
Midst of Crisis, Again?” The Conversation,
June 28.
McCoy, Jennifer, and Francisco Diez
2011 International Mediation in Venezuela.
Washington, DC: United States Institute of
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