How Populists Turn Authoritarian
When Hugo Chávez took power in Venezuela nearly 20 years ago, his leftist populism was supposed to save democracy. Instead, it has led to democracy’s implosion.
Venezuela’s fate stands as a warning: Populism is a path that, at its outset, can look and feel democratic. But it can ultimately lead to outright authoritarianism.
Mr. Chávez rode into office in 1998 propelled by popular grievances over the state of democracy in Venezuela. The judiciary was corrupt. A report by Human Rights Watch found that Venezuela’s top administrative court “had actually established set fees for resolving different kinds of cases.”
There was broad support for Mr. Chávez’s first round of judicial reforms in 1999, which increased judicial independence and integrity. But when the Supreme Court refused to allow the criminal prosecution of four generals who Mr. Chávez believed had participated in an attempted coup against him, he came to see the judiciary as an obstacle to popular will. He later gave himself the authority to suspend unfriendly judges and to pack the courts with new ones, destroying the judiciary’s power to act as a check on his presidency.
Mr. Chávez, like other populist leaders, told his supporters their problems were caused by undemocratic elites and institutions. A strong leader, he argued, was necessary to impose the will of the people.
Populist leaders “see any institutions outside their control as obstacles to be bypassed or overcome,” wrote Kurt Weyland, a University of Texas political scientist, in a 2013 academic article.
This reveals a contradiction between how democracy is perceived and how it actually works. Liberal democracy, Mr. Mudde wrote, “is a complex compromise of popular democracy and liberal elitism, which is therefore only partly democratic.”
That requires handing power to unelected institutions, which are necessary to preserve democracy but at odds with democracy’s image of pure popular will.
But when populist leaders take authority away from those institutions to “return power to the people,” in practice they are consolidating this power for themselves.
“The logic of personalism drives populist politicians to widen their powers and discretion,” Professor Weyland wrote. This is why populists often cultivate cults of personality, holding rallies and appearing almost constantly on television.
Populism’s authoritarian tendencies could be seen in Mr. Chávez’s battles with labor unions.
Venezuela’s union leaders were corrupt, he argued, and had failed to protect workers’ rights. His gov- ernment created a parallel system of new unions, while undermining established unions. But when workers from a state-run oil company went on strike in protest in 2002, he fired more than 18,000 of them and prohibited the action.
By 2004, Mr. Chávez’s government had begun to blacklist workers. To oppose the president was to oppose his project of “Bolívarian socialism” on behalf of the people. Dissent, by that logic, was a threat to freedom, not evidence of it.
In retrospect, these steps pointed squarely toward authoritarianism. But that progression was not inevitable. Strong democratic checks can sometimes keep populists in line. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi left office with a mixed record and a storm of corruption charges, but with the country’s democracy intact.
But it is rarely obvious at the time which path a country is taking.
Decisions that feel like shortcuts to democracy — tossing out judges or vilifying the media — can, in the long term, have the opposite effect.
Along the way, this process can be difficult to spot, as it plays out mainly in the functioning of bureaucratic institutions that most voters pay little mind to. Elections are often still held, as they have been in Venezuela, the news media retains nominal freedom and most citizens can go about their lives as normal.
Venezuela exhibits the worst- case outcome of populist governance, in which institutions have been so crippled that crime is rampant, corruption is nearly universal and the quality of life has collapsed.