Confrontational ‘Us and Them’ Dynamics of Polarised Politics in Venezuela

This book provides a theoretical framework for understanding polarised politics. Contrary to the common understanding that polarisation is associated with populism and illiberal democracies, this book demonstrates that polarisation is by no means the result of one anti-democratic side of the conflict. By proposing this analytical inquiry, this book advances a new theoretical framework to characterise politics as either polarised or not.

This framework is a unique approach that integrates people’s agency and socio-historical constraints to explain polarisation in depth. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse, subject, and governmentality, and Laclau’s concept of logics and hegemony, this framework focuses on how to distinguish polarised politics from another form of politics. As a technology of power, polarisation can be performed by a variety of actors and is governed by a broad, conscious end, that is organising society by reducing the possibilities of alternative ways of thinking, speaking and doing politics to two options.

This study takes a deep dive into the political polarisation in Venezuela, a country with almost two decades of conflict between Chavismo and the Opposition disputing the meaning of democracy, and with the most critical crisis in the Americas as a result of polarisation. With close attention paid to the logics or rationalities of power to explain what lies behind definitions of democracy. This analysis allows us to observe the rationalities and dynamics beyond what is said, in particular, the book explores hegemonic logics (myths, fantasies of threats and promises) used by both political groups to create a political identity.