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Contradiction without Paradox: Evangelical Political Culture in the 1998 Venezuelan Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David Smilde
David Smilde*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

Venezuelan Evangelicals' responses to candidates in that country's 1998 presidential election seem to confirm the view that their political culture is inconsistent, contradictory, and paradoxical. Not only were they just as likely to support nationalist ex–coup leader Hugo Chávez as was the larger population, they also rejected Venezuela's one Evangelical party when it made a clientelist pact with the infamous candidate of Venezuela's discredited Social Democratic party. This article uses concepts from recent cultural theory to analyze qualitative data from these two cases and make sense of the contradictory nature of Evangelical politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , Spring 2004 , pp. 75 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2004

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