Los consejos comunales, participación política y autoritarismo en Venezuela

Abstract

The constitutional process that took place in Venezuela in 1999 brought out a deep political debate on the democracy established in the country since the 1960s, thus stressing the decay of the representative democratic model introduced in that period. Against a backdrop of a deep crisis inherited from the IV Republic, the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999 purports to re-found the Republic, based on the principles of a decentralized federal state, which would attempt to promote a participatory, protagonistic, multi-ethnic and multicultural democratic society,. This study, carried out among Communal Councils representatives, aims to demonstrate that these Venezuelan political communitarian organizations have lost autonomy, possess a low index of political pluralism and are contributing to the process of power concentration in the hands of President Hugo Chávez Frías.