Foreword: Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy / Julia Buxton  ix

Introduction: Participation, Politics, and Culture—Emerging Fragments of Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy / David Smilde  1

1. Defying the Iron Law of Oligarchy I: How Does "El Pueblo" Conceive of Democracy? / Daniel Hellinger  28

2. Participatory Democracy in Venezuela: Origins, Ideas, and Implementation / Margarita López Maya and Luis E. Lander  58

3. Urban Land Committees: Co-operation, Autonomy, and Protagonism / María Pilar García-Guadilla  80

4. Catia Sees You: Community Television, Clientelism, and the State in the Chávez Era / Naomi Schiller  105

5. Radio Bemba in an Age of Electronic Media: The Dynamics of Popular Communication in Chávez's Venezuela / Sujatha Fernandes  133

6. "We Are Still Rebels": The Challenge of Popular History in Bolivarian Venezuela / Alejandro Velasco  159

7. The Misiones of the Chávez Government / Kirk A. Hawkins, Guillermo Rosas, and Michael E. Johnson  188

8. Defying the Iron Law of Oligarchy II: Debating Democracy Online in Venezuela / Daniel Hellinger  221

9. Venezuela's Telenovela: Polarization and Political Discourse in Cosita Rica / Carolina Acosta-Alzuru  246

10. The Color of Mobs: Racial Politics, Ethnopopulism, and Representation in the Chávez Era / Luis Duno Gottberg  273

11. Taking Possession of Public Discourse: Women and the Practice of Political Poetry in Venezuela / Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols  300

12. Christianity and Politics in Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy: Catholics, Evangelicals, and Political Polarization / David Smilde and Coraly Pagan  317

Afterword: Chavismo and Venezuelan Democracy in a New Decade / Daniel Hellinger  342

References  345

Index  

Julia Buxton

David Smilde

Daniel Hellinger

Margarita Lopez Maya

Luis E. Lander

Maria Pilar Garcia-Guadilla

Naomi Schiller

Sujatha Fernandes

Alejandro Velasco

Kirk A. Hawkins

Guillermo Rosas

Michael E. Johnson

Carolina Acosta-Alzuru

Luis Duno Guttberg

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols

Coraly Pagan

“Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.”—Oliver Heath, Journal of Latin American Studies

“Taken together, these chapters make a number of important observations…. The book’s main contribution is therefore to highlight some of the tensions that exist within contemporary Venezuelan democracy, and to show the diverse ways in which citizen participation expresses itself. The strength of the book is that it shows that serious empirical research on Venezuela is being undertaken.”—Oliver Heath, Journal of Latin American Studies

“Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy makes it clear that, while transforming the political landscape, the Chávez era also embodies important continuities with the country’s recent past. The serious problems that the country faces and the social movements that support Chávez did not emerge overnight; they are rooted in the inequities of the oil economy that took hold during the twentieth century. This book is a must read for anybody trying to make sense of the ongoing process of change that is remaking Venezuela.”—Miguel Tinker Salas, author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

“This book evaluates Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela with a clear eye. Through nuanced attention to new empirical research in a rapidly changing context—who speaks, what people believe, who decides, and how power works—it offers a framework for analyzing the intertwined democratic and nondemocratic aspects of politics as it is practiced and lived. This multisited approach—looking from neighborhoods to media, activists to government institutions—could be applied with equal success to the postrevolutionary regimes of Cárdenas or Castro, the populist governments of Vargas or Perón, and the liberal democracies of the present.”—Jeffrey W. Rubin, Boston University

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought