The politics of Venezuela are conducted under what is nominally a federal presidential republic, but is in practice an authoritarian system of government. Prior to the early 1990s, Venezuela was considered an unusually long-standing and stable liberal democracy in Latin America, having transitioned to democracy in 1958. According to the V-Dem Democracy indices Venezuela was in 2023 the third least electoral democratic country in Latin America.
Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez was a Venezuelan politician and academician who was the 46th and 51st president of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1994 to 1999, thus becoming the longest serving democratically elected politician to govern the country in the twentieth century.
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello, known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was a Venezuelan politician who served as the president of Venezuela, from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of the Democratic Action, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 1998. The main candidates were Hugo Chávez, a career military officer who led a coup d'état against then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992; and former Carabobo Governor Henrique Salas Römer. Both candidates represented newly formed parties, a first in a country where the main candidates always represented the parties of the bipartisanship. Chávez represented the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), while Salas Römer represented Project Venezuela. Initially weak in the polls, Chávez ran on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform, condemning the two major parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics since 1958; and began to gain ground in the polls after the previous front runners faded. Despite the fact that the major parties endorsed Salas Römer, Chávez was elected into his first term as President of Venezuela.
Elections in Venezuela are held at a national level for the President of Venezuela as head of state and head of government, and for a unicameral legislature. The President of Venezuela is elected for a six-year term by direct election plurality voting, and is eligible for re-election. The National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional) has 277 members (diputados), elected for five-year terms using a mixed-member majoritarian representation system. Elections also take place at state level and local level.
Democratic Action is a Venezuelan social democratic and centre-left political party established in 1941. The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government during Venezuela's first democratic period (1945–1948). A decade of dictatorship under Marcos Pérez Jiménez followed, which saw AD excluded from power. With the advent of democracy in 1958, four Presidents of Venezuela came from Acción Democrática from the 1950s to the 1990s during the two-party period with COPEI.
Raúl Leoni Otero was the president of Venezuela from 1964 until 1969. He was a member of the Generation of 1928 and a charter member of the Acción Democrática party, and the first Labor minister of Venezuela.
COPEI, also referred to as the Social Christian Party or Green Party, is a Christian democratic party in Venezuela. The acronym stands for Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, but this provisional full name has fallen out of use. The party was influential during the twentieth century as a signatory of the Puntofijo Pact and influenced many politicians throughout Latin America at its peak.
Rear Admiral Wolfgang Enrique Larrazábal Ugueto was a Venezuelan naval officer and politician. He served as President of Venezuela following the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in the 23 January 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état, standing down later that year.
The Venezuelan coup attempt of February 1992 was an attempt to seize control of the government of Venezuela by the Hugo Chávez-led Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) that took place on 4 February 1992. The coup was directed against President Carlos Andrés Pérez and occurred in a period marked by economic liberalization reforms, which were attempted in order to decrease the country's level of indebtedness and had caused major protests and social unrest. Despite their failure to depose the government of Carlos Andrés, the February coup attempts brought Chávez into the national spotlight. Fighting during the coup resulted in the deaths of at least 143 people and possibly as many as several hundred.
The Puntofijo Pact was a formal arrangement arrived at between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI, and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), for the acceptance of the 1958 presidential elections and the preservation of the new democratic system. The pact was a written guarantee that the signing parties would respect the election results, prevent single-party hegemony, share power, and collaborate to prevent dictatorship.
Francisco Javier Arias Cárdenas is a Venezuelan politician and career military officer, and was the governor of Zulia state. He participated in Hugo Chávez's unsuccessful February 1992 coup attempt, being pardoned in 1994 by Rafael Caldera, along with the other conspirators. He was elected Governor of Zulia state in 1995 for the Radical Cause, and challenged Hugo Chávez for the presidency in 2000. He subsequently served as Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN, and deputy to the National Assembly after the 2010 parliamentary elections.
The first presidency of Rafael Caldera took place from 1969 to 1974. He was elected by only 33,000 votes. He was sworn in as president in March 1969—the first time in the country's 139-year history that an incumbent government peacefully surrendered power to the opposition.
The second presidency of Rafael Caldera took place from 1994 to 1999. Caldera had previously been President from 1969 to 1974.
El Trienio Adeco was a three-year period in Venezuelan history, from 1945 to 1948, under the government of the popular party Democratic Action. The party gained office via the 1945 Venezuelan coup d'état against President Isaías Medina Angarita, and held the first democratic elections in Venezuelan history, beginning with the 1946 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election. The 1947 Venezuelan general election saw Democratic Action formally elected to office, but it was removed from office shortly after in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état.
A military dictatorship ruled Venezuela for ten years, from 1948 to 1958. After the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état brought an end a three-year experiment in democracy, a triumvirate of military personnel controlled the government until 1952, when it held presidential elections. These were free enough to produce results unacceptable to the government, leading them to be falsified, and to one of the three leaders, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, assuming the Presidency. His government was brought to an end by the 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état which saw the advent of democracy, with a transition government under Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal in place until the December 1958 elections. Prior to the elections, three of the main political parties signed up to the Punto Fijo Pact power-transition agreement.
Democracy in Venezuela refers to the system of governance that has prevailed in Venezuela since direct election at the presidential level and later in the 1990s at the regional level. Democracy as a system of government in the country has had a history interrupted by coups d'état, some in the name of democracy itself. From 1958 onward, Venezuela was considered to be a relatively stable democracy within a continent that was facing a wave of military dictatorship, consuming almost all Latin American countries in the 1970s. By 1977, Venezuela was the only one of three democracies in Latin America, along with Colombia and Costa Rica. With the election of Hugo Chávez in the 1998 presidential election, the country started experiencing democratic backsliding. In 2008, Venezuela was ranked the least democratic nation in South America in The Economist Democracy Index, and by 2022 it ranked 147th out of 167 countries, with a rating of an authoritarian regime.
Coups d'état in Venezuela have occurred almost since the foundation of the Republic. Throughout the history of Venezuela, insurrections, uprisings, or military or civil revolutions were used to overthrow and replace governments. These coups were performed using force, intimidation, and pseudo-legal methods. Gradually with the consolidation of a democratic system in the country, coups became less and less common.
Los Notables were a group of Venezuelan intellectuals formed in 1990 and headed by Arturo Uslar Pietri critical of the second government of Carlos Andrés Pérez who proposed the implementation of several public reforms. The group would later demand the proposals implementation, demand the resignation or dismissal of Carlos Andrés and would criticize other state institutions, including the Venezuelan Supreme Court and judicial system, the Supreme Electoral Council, the Congress and the political parties. It was later suggested that members of the group may have been involved in subsequent conspiracies against the government of Carlos Andres, including the first and second attempted coup d'état in Venezuela in 1992. Rafael Caldera and Ramón Escovar Salom, Venezuela's attorney general, are also usually included in the group.
