Quality of democracy in Venezuela

Discussions of democracy in contemporary Venezuela lack a settled definition of the subject, how to study it, or indeed of what counts as "democracy" in the first place. The regime has been described as everything from participatory democracy, hybrid, mixed, and personalist to populist, illiberal, or no longer democratic but rather competitive authoritarian. The goal of this article is to measure the quality of democracy in Venezuela, within the terms of a procedural concept of democracy as detailed in our earlier work. Empirical measurement of the quality of democracy on five dimensions (electoral choice, participation, responsiveness, accountability, sovereignty) reveals a low level overall and deep institutional weakness under a personalist leadership, with little change from 2005 to 2010. Future scenarios, after the 2012 presidential election result, include reinforcement of authoritarian trends, open militarization, liberalization and institutional strengthening, or long term volatility and polarized conflict. All scenarios are contingent on the health of President Chavez, who is a central unifying factor for his movement and regime