With the cards stacked against you: Challenges to a negotiated transition to democracy in Venezuela

Abstract

This article uses the political science literature on transitions to democracy to discuss the domestic challenges to a negotiated transition in Venezuela. Whereas a transition to democ-racy may occur through many different pathways and processes, the negotiated path has often been hailed as the most conducive to democracy consolidation. This article discusses three key challenges to a negotiated outcome in Venezuela. The first is the current political-economic context marked by de-liberalisation and rapidly increasing inequality between the "ins"and "outs"; the second refers to the content of a potential pact in a situation where the Venezuelan state is retrenching territorially and from key state functions; and the third refers to the challenges of guaranteeing a pact for the future in a context of a majoritarian constitu-tion and weak electoral prospects for the regime. The article shows how the structural condi-tions in Venezuela reduces the incentives for both parties to enter a democratising pact and add insights to the transitology literature on how de-liberalisation and stateness problems negatively affect actors' incentives to negotiate a pact.