The Cold War heightened the perception of threat in the United States and among Latin American elites, from the Soviet Union but also other socialist states. When the Cold War ended, Latin America began expanding and deepening its economic and political connections with more parts of the world than it ever had before. Economic restructuring after the debt crisis had already oriented Latin American economies to export globally, and the number and variety of trading partners multiplied. The Cold War had been a “bipolar” international environment, where two large powers (the United States and the Soviet Union) were locked in ideological conflict, which in turn pulled in other countries, voluntarily or not. As seen in previous chapters, the U.S. judged Latin American governments by their response to that ideological struggle. The end of the Cold War meant a return to a “multipolar” environment with no major single conflict, which opened up the world to Latin American governments. This chapter explores contemporary relations between Latin America and China, Russia, Japan, Europe, and Iran.

With the rise of Hugo Chávez and other presidents around the turn of the century, a new breed of leftist leaders challenged the postwar political and economic rules promoted by the United States. Many Latin American left-leaning governments openly used the language of dependency theory to depict their strategy. Joining together within both economic and political institutions that excluded the United States, they hoped that they could break the stranglehold of international capitalism and imperial designs. Strategies along these lines include trade agreements, the creation of international institutions, discussions of common currencies, and mutual aid. The ultimate goal of these various efforts is to establish political and economic autonomy from the United States. That would mean being freed from political interference, economic pressure, violations of sovereignty, or any other type of imposition from the hegemonic power. This chapter takes stock of the Latin American left’s ability to chart a course distinct from that preferred by the United States in the twenty-first century.

Up until the 1990s, Venezuela was one of the longest-running and most stable uninterrupted liberal democracies in Latin America. Today, it is an authoritarian regime. In nineteen years, Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, managed to destroy the system of checks and balances, end free and fair elections, and terminate political rights and civil liberties. The government has delayed and canceled elections, circumvented the authority of the elected legislature, imprisoned political opponents without trial, used lethal force against protesters, and banned opposition parties. How is it that Venezuela, historically one of the most robust democracies in the region, turned into the second most authoritarian country in Latin America?

What happens to state bureaucracies when authoritarianism emerges? How do autocrats seek to use the administration to their ends? This chapter addresses these questions, analyzing Venezuela as a typical or representative case. Venezuela has been a (more or less) functioning democracy since 1958. Within the system of the so-called "Puntofijismo," major parties agreed to a consensual model of democracy, sharing offices and distributing revenues of the oil rent. The public administration supported and managed the distribution. This led to stability and wealth in regional comparison. In 1998, Hugo Chávez, a former military officer and failed putschist, assumed the presidency in Venezuela. In the following years, but especially under president Maduro, Venezuela experienced a severe decline of democracy and is today clearly an authoritarian regime. In this chapter, we analyze the strategies of the Chavista governments vis-à-vis the administration. We identify three main strategies to sideline the established bureaucracy: first, repression and firing; second, circumventing and neglecting, which means creating a "parallel state"; and third, militarization of the "civil" service.

Chapter three identifies how citizens’ charismatic attachments form, overwhelm alternative linkage types, and contribute to the development of powerful political movements. First, I describe three conditions that charismatic founders must fulfill to cultivate deep, unmediated, and emotional bonds with their followers: (1) direct recognition of these marginalized people’s suffering; (2) enactment of bold, seemingly miraculous policies; and (3) construction of a narrative that glorifies the leader’s heroic position, demonizes his opponents, and stresses his mission to transform society. Next, focusing on the Venezuelan case, I qualitatively examine how Chávez fulfilled these conditions to establish charismatic attachments with his followers. I also show how these bonds overpowered alternative linkages rooted in substantive programs and Chavista organizations. Finally, I conduct a quantitative analysis using a 2007 survey from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). The results confirm the overwhelming influence of charismatic, rather than programmatic or organizational, factors on citizens’ attachments to Chavismo.

This chapter examines populism in Latin America as a method of exercising power, rather than a specific set of substantive provisions. It explores the commonalities between left-populism and right-populism as illustrated by two ideologically opposing figures, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. Despite their contrasting social and economic policies, there were more similarities than differences in the legal architecture they deployed. In both cases, the preferred tools included the resort to referenda to circumvent and control the legislature, delegitimation of the opposition, and activation of mechanisms allowing the executive to legislate by decree. Their methods illustrate how populist leaders use tools to produce arguments of legitimacy for their selection of winners and losers in society.