Nicolás Maduro’s departure from power was widely received as the collapse of a political model that had reached its limits. After years of economic collapse, mass migration, systematic repression, and electoral manipulation, the fall of the Venezuelan leader seemed to close a cycle that began with Hugo Chávez in 1999. For millions of Venezuelans, the question seemed simple: how could it possibly be worse than what they had already lived through?
Yet history suggests that the fall of an autocrat does not mark the end of the democratic struggle, but rather its most dangerous phase. Venezuela joins a long list of countries—from Iraq and Libya to post-Soviet Russia—where the departure of a ruler produced neither stability nor consolidated democracy.
Latin America offers different lessons. Chile’s negotiated transition preserved state capacity and gradually subordinated the military, though at the cost of delayed justice and limited popular participation. Post-authoritarian Peru combined rapid political turnover with institutional weakening. Nicaragua shows another trajectory: a revolutionary rupture that dismantled one dictatorship only to rebuild a new personalist authoritarianism.
This risk is not unique to Venezuela. Recent transitions in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia confirm an idea highlighted by Guillermo O’Donnell and Adam Przeworski: democracy is not guaranteed by elections alone, but by institutionalized uncertainty—rules that everyone accepts even when they lose. When regimes collapse abruptly, especially under external pressure, power is often reorganized not around durable institutions, but around armed actors or technocrats backed from abroad.
Venezuela is not a blank slate
Maduro’s regime never possessed solid democratic legitimacy. His designation by Chávez and the manipulation of the 2013 election established a pattern that continued with the electoral farce of 2018. The 2024 presidential election, clearly won by the opposition and documented through parallel vote tabulation, wiped out what little electoral credibility remained. The regime’s refusal to accept defeat confirmed that power rested on coercion.
The economic crisis—minimum wages below one dollar, reactivated hyperinflation, and one of the largest peacetime migrations in history—further narrowed the space for prudent political calculation.
In that context, support for a rapid solution, even a violent one, is understandable. But Venezuela does not emerge from Maduro’s fall as a unified political community. Years of authoritarianism fragmented power among senior military commanders, intelligence services, armed colectivos, criminal networks, and foreign groups—a dispersion designed to prevent the armed forces from becoming a direct threat.
These actors do not disappear with the leader’s exit. On the contrary, sudden collapse can break the informal pacts that, however perverse, had contained even greater violence.
Previous cases illustrate the risk. In Iraq, de-Baathification removed much of the state’s administrative structure, creating a vacuum filled by armed insurgencies. In Libya, the collapse of the regime without institutional succession dissolved the state itself.
The United States, which exerts considerable influence over Venezuela’s transition, appears aware of these precedents. Rather than promoting total de-Chavization, Washington has tolerated continuity figures who might prevent state collapse, even at the cost of sidelining part of the democratic opposition.
Stability first, democracy later?
The role of the United States reflects a persistent tension between democratic principles and geopolitical priorities. Official rhetoric emphasizes democracy, the fight against drug trafficking, and regional security. Yet recent decisions—tolerance toward figures from the old regime, prioritization of energy stability, and the marginalization of opposition actors—suggest a familiar objective: political stability in strategic terms.
This logic has precedents. From Park Chung-hee’s South Korea to Suharto’s Indonesia, authoritarian modernization aligned with Washington was presented for decades as a preliminary step toward democratization. In some cases democracy came later; in others, stability consolidated long-lasting authoritarian regimes.
Venezuela’s interim leadership has drawn comparisons with these models of technocratic stabilization. Its defenders point to a degree of macroeconomic stabilization and the partial recovery of state capacity. Its critics warn that postponing democratic accountability may entrench what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson call extractive institutions—systems that concentrate power and rents in the hands of narrow elites.
The Venezuelan dilemma resembles Chile’s negotiated transition less than cycles of institutional instability such as Peru’s, or Nicaragua’s warning about how revolutionary moments can lead to new concentrations of power.
In this context, oil remains politically central. Venezuelan crude is heavy, costly to refine, and less strategic in a global market shaped by the energy transition. Reduced access to China and the likely end of subsidized shipments to Cuba further diminish its geopolitical weight.
Even so, oil continues to structure negotiations among elites. Oil rents have historically weakened incentives for institutional pluralism, encouraging struggles for control of the state rather than investment in accountability or economic diversification.
The paradox is that oil retains political influence even as its material importance declines. Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976 under a democratic, pro-U.S. government. Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran was overthrown in 1953 for attempting to exercise similar sovereign control. Today, Venezuelan oil is less crucial to the world economy than Iranian oil was then, yet control over it still defines the external limits of political change.
The Iranian mirror
These dynamics resonate beyond Latin America. Following the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in recent U.S. and Israeli attacks, which eliminated part of the regime’s military high command, Iran now faces a familiar question: if the ayatollahs’ regime collapses, will it open the path to democratization or to another form of externally backed authoritarianism?
As in Venezuela, some sectors of the opposition seek international support by promising stability, investment, and geopolitical alignment. At the same time, social movements—especially those led by women and young people—are articulating deeper demands for democratic transformation.
The Venezuelan case offers a warning: when external actors privilege predictability over political participation, transitions may succeed in removing rulers without building the institutions needed for democratic competition.
The slow work of democracy
Moments of collapse release enormous political energy. Without institutions to channel it, that energy can become destructive. But transitions that privilege order alone run the risk of consolidating new forms of unaccountable power.
Democratization succeeds only when neither of these impulses dominates: when popular mobilization is translated into durable rules and political authority operates within clear institutional limits.
Latin America does not lack democratic aspiration. What is often missing—frequently under external pressure—is the time and political space necessary for democracy to be built and institutionalized.
The question facing Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries is not whether authoritarianism should end, but how. The answer will determine whether the region moves toward a stronger democracy or simply shifts from one form of domination to another.
Autor
Associate Research Fellow at ICAEPA, based in Sheffield, UK. Econometrician. Consultant in risk analysis, business intelligence, value chain analysis, and transfer pricing.
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Valencia College (Orlando, Florida). PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Carabobo (Venezuela). Chair of the Latinx Studies Section of LASA.
