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Democracy and Military Control in Venezuela: From Subordination to Insurrection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Deborah L. Norden
Deborah L. Norden*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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During the dramatic wave of democratization in the 1980s, Venezuela stood out as South America's wise elder. While neighboring militaries had shifted in and out of power, sometimes ruling for decades, Venezuela had maintained a stable democracy since 1959. After a relatively brief period of adjustment, the country settled into a political system in which two dominant political parties alternated in power and the armed forces remained peacefully in the barracks. Yet twice in 1992, important sectors of the armed forces took up arms to displace what they and many other Venezuelans viewed as a decrepit and corrupt political system. The coups failed, but they left the political system shaken and the military's political subordination seriously in doubt. The coup attempts also raised doubts about Venezuelan strategies for military control that had been a model for the rest of Latin America.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , 1998 , pp. 143 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

A previous version entitled “Democracy and the Armed Forces in Venezuela” was presented to the International Studies Association, 21–25 February 1995, Chicago. I would like to thank Scott Tollefson, Daniel Hellinger, Felipe Agüero, and the anonymous LARR reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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