Democracy and decentralisation in Venezuela

This thesis explores the relations between democracy and decentralization in Venezuela during the period from 1989 to 2000. In particular it explores the emergence of political decentralization as the spatial distribution of power and its links with the process of democratization within political spaces. The spatial distribution of power has impacts upon both political institutions and civil society. This is where its central importance lies. Because of this, the framework of ideas underlying the thesis is followed within a methodologicalf ocus that emphasizesb oth the potency of the spatial, as a guiding element of politics and the political, and the local scale and the political practice of individuals. The backgroundt o the study is establishedth rough an explorationo f territoriality and the spatiality of power in Venezuela during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the centralist form of the state and the state reforms which were promoted at the end of the 1980s and which gave rise to the political decentralization of 1989 at the level of states and municipalities. The main period of study (1989-2000) is divided into three stages according to the dynamics of the process of democratization itself. Finally, the changes occurring at the local level through the application of decentralization are analyzed through a case study at the level of the municipality and of the parish: the Libertador municipality of the state of Mdrida and the parish of J. J. Osuna Rodriguez. The specific local examples explored in the thesis allow highlighted the ways in which clientelism can be associated with the vertical structures of power that have predominated in Latin America. Nevertheless, whilst its importance has been highlighted here through an understanding of the process of democratisation on the South American continent, it is interesting to note that it is not often explicitly considered as another mode of power in western political theory.