Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Chavismo, Populism, and Democracy
- 3 Measuring the Populist Discourse of Chavismo
- 4 Party System Breakdown and the Rise of Chavismo
- 5 The Causes of Populism in Comparative Perspective
- 6 Populist Organization: The Bolivarian Circles in Venezuela
- 7 Populist Policy: The Missions of the Chávez Government
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix A The Populist Speech Rubric
- Appendix B Test of the Sampling Technique
- Appendix C Test of Interaction Effects
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Chavismo, Populism, and Democracy
- 3 Measuring the Populist Discourse of Chavismo
- 4 Party System Breakdown and the Rise of Chavismo
- 5 The Causes of Populism in Comparative Perspective
- 6 Populist Organization: The Bolivarian Circles in Venezuela
- 7 Populist Policy: The Missions of the Chávez Government
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix A The Populist Speech Rubric
- Appendix B Test of the Sampling Technique
- Appendix C Test of Interaction Effects
- References
- Index
Summary
This book was born out of the last stages of my dissertation research nearly 10 years ago. I first traveled to Venezuela in 1999 to study why the traditional system of political parties had broken down. For several months I interviewed former party leaders and scholars of traditional Venezuelan politics, a process that gradually educated me in the history and workings of the old Punto Fijo system. However, as I worked, it became clear that something new and important was taking shape in Venezuela, something that very few academics were studying yet. This was the movement led by Hugo Chávez, or “Chavismo,” which was taking the place of the old party system.
Seeing Chavismo as the real story was my first step in a process of discovery; the second step came when I began to understand the distinct qualities of Chavismo as a populist movement. My academic training is in the “new institutionalism,” meaning that I study the causes and consequences of formal rules and political organization, particularly political parties, using rational-choice theory. Hence, when my first interviews of Chavista leaders took place in December 1999, I focused on the leadership of what was then the movement's official party, Movimiento V República or MVR. My attempts to analyze Chavismo were essentially descriptions of MVR's organization and ideology. However, in early 2003, a colleague invited me to present a conference paper discussing Chavismo as an example of populism.
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- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010