Contesting Autocracy: Repression and Opposition Coordination in Venezuela
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721999975 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Political Studies
2023, Vol. 71(1) 47 –68
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321721999975
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Contesting Autocracy:
Repression and Opposition
Coordination in Venezuela
Maryhen Jiménez
Abstract
Opposition coordination varies widely in electoral autocracies. Sometimes, opposition parties
are highly coordinated and create alliances, present joint candidates or common policy platforms.
Yet, at other times, oppositions choose to challenge incumbents individually. This article seeks
to explain what drives opposition parties to coordinate in non-democratic regimes. It finds that
opponents’ decision-making and strategy formation is influenced by the amount of repression
they face from the incumbent regime. It argues that repression has a curvilinear relationship
with opposition coordination. When repression is low and high, opposition coordination will be
informal or clandestine. However, when repression is at intermediate levels, opposition parties
will formally coordinate to dislodge authoritarian incumbents. This article illustrates this argument
through an analysis of the Venezuelan opposition under Chavismo (1999–2018), combining 129
interviews with party elites, journalists, academics, and regime defectors, along with archival
research at key historical moments.
Keywords
electoral autocracies, repression, oppositions, political parties, Venezuela, Latin America
Accepted: 12 February 2021
Autocrats are not invincible, and they know it. One of their biggest fears is an organized
and united opposition.1 They often use ‘divide and conquer’ strategies, such as distribut-
ing fiscal resources and political offices among opposition groups (Arriola, 2013; Gandhi
and Przeworski, 2006; Lust-Okar, 2007; Schedler, 2002a), or deploying tactics of repres-
sion, be they legal or coercive, to guarantee their continued hold onto power (Davenport
et al., 2004; Levitsky and Way, 2010). As a result, oppositions often fragment and do not
pose a threat to incumbents. For instance, in 1988 South Korea and 1992 Kenya, incum-
bents won because multiple opposition candidates could not agree on creating a joint
Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author:
Maryhen Jiménez, Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, Church Walk, Oxford OX2 6JF, UK.
Email: maryhen.jimenezmorales@area.ox.ac.uk
999975PSX0010.1177/0032321721999975Political StudiesJimenez
research-article2021
Article
48 Political Studies 71(1)
platform thereby splitting the opposition votes. Yet, at other times, some countries’ oppo-
sitions coordinate to successfully challenge incumbent power. For example, opponents
created an electoral alliance to oppose Ferdinand Marcos in the mid-1980s in the
Philippines and in Turkey, a coordinated opposition successfully challenged the ruling
Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) in the 2019 local elections in Istanbul and
Ankara. In Venezuela, opposition parties created the alliance Mesa de la Unidad
Democrática (MUD) to collectively challenge Hugo Chávez, and then Nicolás Maduro.
These examples show that when oppositions coordinate, they are more likely to increase
their competitiveness and/or secure partial victories under authoritarian rule. What
explains variation in opposition coordination (OC)?
This article focusses on repression as an explanatory variable for coordination. The
argument is twofold: (1) repression shapes the incentives for coordination and (2) opposi-
tions can coordinate either in informal or formal ways, depending on the levels of threat
they face at a particular point in time. Moreover, while we should expect opponents to
formally coordinate at intermediate levels of repression -where survival is at stake, but
pooling resources may still pay off – we might not do so when repression is either low or
high. This is so because low repression does not threaten parties’ survival or competitive-
ness in any serious way, therefore, there is no need for formal coordination. At high
repression, formal coordination is too costly because of the high risks it bears. In the latter
two scenarios, coordination can in fact happen, but if it does, it would be informal.
This article analyses the causal relationship between repression and OC in the setting
of contemporary Venezuela, a country that has transitioned from low to intermediate to
high repression (1999–2018). Contrary to the plausible expectation that regime oppo-
nents will always ally to oust incumbents, we observe a puzzling variation in coordination
efforts: opposition parties have only at specific times chosen to present a unified front.
Studying the within-case variation of repression and coordination in Venezuela provides
lessons for a wide range of authoritarian regimes, including those engaged in low, mid or
high levels of repression. This article uses process-tracing and within-case analysis to
reconstruct when and how opponents have decided to coordinate. These methods are par-
ticularly useful for theory generating purposes as they allow to establish how certain steps
may lead to an expected outcome over time. To analyse outcomes or changes over time,
however, it is important to identify and examine key singular moments in time that con-
tribute to understanding variation one is seeking to explain (Collier, 2011; George and
Bennett, 2005). Here, I use an in-depth within-case study to explain the causal pathway
between repression and coordination between 1999 and 2018.
To assess this argument, this article builds on original data from 6 years of iterative
field research between 2014 and 2020. I use 129 semi-structured interviews with key
elites from all major opposition parties, including Primero Justicia (PJ), Voluntad Popular
(VP), Acción Democrática (AD), Comité de Organización Política e Independiente
(COPEI), Causa R, Avanzada Progresista (AP), Alianza Bravo Pueblo (ABP), Un Nuevo
Tiempo (UNT) and Vente Venezuela (VV). I also use interviews conducted with members
of the MUD’s Executive Secretary, journalists, academics, political advisors, former
judges members of civil society organizations and former regime members to analyse OC
under Chavismo.2 I also conducted archival research in newspapers3 and consulted sec-
ondary literature as well as domestic and international reports on repression in Venezuela
to examine the causal relationship proposed in this work.
I begin by briefly reviewing the literature on OC in authoritarian regimes, identifying
existing explanations, gaps and this article’s contribution. Thereafter, I offer a definition
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