Hugo Chavez Leaves The Soft-Dictator's Oil Curse As His Legacy

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, has died. He was 58 years old. Chavez had been treated in Cuba, a country with which he was closely allied. Since his return from Cuba, Chavez was isolated in a military hospital. Official communiqués reported that he was having breathing problems but was well enough to run the affairs of state. Chavez’s muzzled state press had condemned reports that Chavez had died or was at death’s door.

Chavez, who dominated Venezuelan politics for almost a decade and a half, combined policies of communal socialism, populism, patronage, nationalization, and virulent anti-Americanism. Chavez named his policies the Bolivar Revolution, but they entered the vernacular as “Chavismo.” In foreign policy, he created a bloc of leftist Latin American states united by virulent anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. Chavez used the media and populist policies, subsidies, patronage, corruption, and direct distribution to the poor to defeat his middle class and business opposition in three elections. He was known to hold forth in marathon TV conversations with the Venezuelan people. Chavez’s people populated Venezuela’s poor barrios. They idolized the at times clownish figure Chavez cut in his red beret and red-white-blue jumpsuits. He likened George Bush to the devil in a bizarre speech to the United Nations General Assembly. His antics played well to his political base at home and to anti-American forces abroad.



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Chavez’s Cancer: Why Dictators Do not Name Successors

Hugo Chavez’s announcement that he has cancer will terminate his ascent towards dictatorship even if he survives. Dictators cannot appear to be mortal. They cannot name successors, unless the successor is a personal extension, such as a son.

Preparing the groundwork for a successor-son takes time and absolute power as the Kim dynasty in North Korea can attest. The more common approach is to name no successor and let the fight begin after your death.

Stalin wrote the game book on modern dictatorship. He removed immediately, and usually permanently, anyone even rumored as his successor. Stalin understood that dictator remains in power only as long as his subordinates do not coalesce into a coalition strong enough to unseat him.

The naming of a successor facilitates the formation of a coalition around the successor and that is the end of the dictator.

There is one other factor: Dictators do not have dynamic and forceful deputies around them. Instead, they prefer Yes Men. Nonentities are less likely to attract coalition followers. In Stalin’s case, the result was a USSR run by party hacks for almost fifty years.

In the Soviet and Chinese communist cases, the party dictatorship survived the deaths of their “Great Leaders” (Lenin, Stalin, Mao) because of its dominant position. But in each case, a power struggle ensued within the party. Power struggles fought without rules are the consequence of the dying leader not specifying a successor. Only Lenin wrote a political testament, but it concluded that only he was suited to run the country.

Chavez’s run towards a personal dictatorship is over. He has not built a strong party. He is surrounded by non-entities, who have already begun jockeying to replace him. Worst of all: Unlike Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, he has not had time to eliminate other parties and elections. The coming election will either pit an ailing Chavez or a Chavez non-entity against a real opponent in the midst of a collapsing economy.

There is again reason to be bullish on Venezuela.